What do you know about American non-profit salaries? Or even German ones?
A sensible thing to do before proclaiming a knee-jerk opinion is to get some information from this wonderful global network we are all connected to. Isn't context useful?
Now, I have to admit, (because I just did it) that when you google something like "charity financial salary statements", you will get garbage hits, meaning "free" websites (and people referring you to them like nolo) that require you to sign up and jump through hoops.
One basic aspect of doing research on the Internet is knowing that (when) you don't have to play that game, because there are official sources.
Regarding this topic, there is something in the US called an IRS Form 990, and you can look them up at the unbelievably logical URL:
This is how you can look at any tax return for a non-profit and it says right at the top "Open to Public Inspection". How nice.
I used to volunteer with a state chapter of a mental health advocacy organization, so I looked up the national organization (which is separate but affiliated). The CEO makes ~$250K and the other executives are all around $150K. This for revenue in the range of a few tens of millions per year.
They also pay several contractors (not individuals, but business names) on the order of $200-300K per year.
Now of course, the state and local organizations that one might assume do most of the real work, do not pay anyone like that. I seem to recall that the leader of the state chapter was something like $70K or less, several years ago. And the director position would cycle in and out - I don't think they typically stayed for long. Everybody else was making a lot less and extremely overworked and sometimes burned out. They would have interns, but no budget to hire them.
In conclusion, whether or not $350K is obscene to Germans, you are completely wrong in your gratuitous comment about SV bros, as what I just read implies that people in the non-profit world in the US would at least not be shocked by such a salary.
Total number of individuals employed in calendar year 2019: 291
Salaries, other compensation, employee benefits: $55.6 million
(In the 2020 Form, that latter amount has gone up to $68 million for Wikimedia, but the 2020 Form 990 for the Internet Archive isn't online yet, so this will have to do.)
So, going just by the information on that page (happy to go further into the details ...), Wikimedia has about twice the employees but more than five times the salary costs. And the Internet Archive is actually very important to Wikipedia (link rot).
Executive salaries at the Wikimedia Foundation are about twice what they are at the Internet Archive:
Secondly, you seem to be completely and utterly oblivious to the question of salaries elsewhere in the world, such as India, South Africa or Latin America, which is where the Wikimedia Foundation has just been fundraising.
Don't you think it is shameful for a nonprofit to go panhandling in those countries, with misleading fundraising messages implying Wikipedia will disappear if they don't give money, in order to pay people in the US a salary that is like 500 times the median income in India?
>you are completely wrong in your gratuitous comment about SV bros
GP is wrong, yes. I'd extend it beyond SV bros to US middle class at large. US pay scales are ridiculously high compared to the rest of the world for a cost of living on average that doesn't seem as high unless it's really in the big expensive cities.
