ASAN has recently posted their 2014 tax return. Though ASAN started in 2006, they were not granted 501(c) tax exempt status until 2011. On reviewing their 2011 return we see that Ne'eman paid himself a salary of $40,000 a year for running ASAN.
In 2012 Ne'eman raised his own salary to $65,000 a year, a 62% increase, while the organization's revenues increased by only about half that percent. Interestingly enough, one of ASAN's and neurodiversity's talking points against autism speaks was the high compensation that some of the executives at AS received. In 2010, Autism Speaks' then president Mark Roithmayr was paid a salary of $400,000. He in fact had a five year contract for two million dollars. Neurodiversity and ASAN in particular made autism speaks out to be a bunch of greedy pigs who were taking money from the autism community by paying their president so generously. However, one has to look at the bigger picture. Roithmayr was paid $400,000 a year in 2010 out of more than 50 million dollars in revenue. In 2012, Ari Ne'eman was paid $65,000 a year out of about $375,000 in revenue. This means that Ne'eman's salary was nearly twenty times higher than Roithmayr's in ratio.
In 2013, Ne'eman's salary was $71,000 a year, though a more modest increase, it was still more than 10% in one year.
According to the latest 2014 figures, neurodiversity has still been as profitable for Ne'eman as ever as his annual salary was $80,000 or $83,588.00 including all of his compensation.
This means that his salary more than doubled in four years (or maybe technically less time than that). He's received an average annual salary increase of more than 25% a year since ASAN was granted non-profit status by the IRS.
In 2012, proportionately Ne'eman's most profitable year, about 17% of ASAN's revenues went to pay his salary alone. In 2014, ASAN's revenue was $765,282.00, so even though a lower proportion went to pay his salary in 2014, it was still more than 10% of the organization's total revenue.
If you look at one of their two accomplishments in terms of what the organization has done, trying to provide better health care options for autistics, you see that less money was spent on that than on Ne'eman's salary.
On public advocacy, they spent more than $360,000. I wonder if this includes airfare tickets to various autism speaks walks where it is known certain ASAN supporters go to harass parents who are trying to raise money to help their kids.
We see that more than a third of ASAN's revenue in 2014 was spent on employee salaries and other compensation.
Are Autism Speaks the only ogres who are ripping off the autism community or is there a certain pot calling the kettle black?
I wonder when congress will get some common sense and change the laws that make it so easy for people to start a charitable organization and get nonprofit status from the IRS and give themselves such huge compensation rather than helping those in need.
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