For comparison's sake, Madeleine Jacobs was paid $888,199 in reportable compensation in 2015. Current ACS CEO Thomas Connelly was paid $590,190. (Hard to determine if this was his total compensation for the entire 2015 calendar year, since he took office in February 2015.) If this is only 11 months' pay, his total annual compensation would be in the 643k range.)
I see that just about all officers had high-single or double-digit increases in their pay. The cost-of-living in the DC metro area must have gone up.
Pay your dues folks! It's for your benefit, as you can see here.
ReplyDeleteSerious question here: what portion of revenue that pays the salaries comes from dues versus publishing? I'm not sure of the breakdown. Either way, some serious over-compensation given the recent median salaries for ACS members who are doing chemistry.
ReplyDeleteuntil people start making serious noise about this, or members start quitting, i don't see any salaries being reduced
DeleteACS makes money mostly from the publishing division (which, I never fail to mention, is basically taxpayer dollars (i.e. overhead from grants, funneled back through the libraries.)) The dues are a very small portion over the overall revenue streams heading into ACS.
DeleteFrom 2015 ACS financial statement: total unrestricted revenue $512M, membership dues $12M. More than 80% of the revenue comes from 'electronic services'.
DeleteOut of curiosity, I checked how ACS compares to societies for other sciences: AMS (mathematics), SIAM (applied mathematics), APS (physics) and, AAS (astronomy). It indeed looks like ACS is a huge publishing house: then next largest society (APS) had a revenue of ~50M. ACS also has a lot more members, ~150000 vs. ~50000 in APS, but still the ratio of revenue/member is a factor of 3 higher. The other societies seemed to be a lot like APS, only somewhat smaller in both revenue and membership. Highest paid officers in other societies had a salary in $250K to $350K range.
I check yet another society, IEEE (electronics, computers, telecommunications etc. engineering). They have about 430000 members, so much larger than even ACS. Revenue was $430M and top salary about $700K. So ACS officer salaries aren't especially high compared to the total revenue of the society, but ACS looks a lot more 'business-like' than the other professional societies.
DeleteIt's really quite simple: ACS is *NOT A SCIENTIFIC ORGANIZATION* but a for-profit publishing house masquerading as one. As long as even a handful of people pay dues, then all the publishing revenue is tax free.
ReplyDeleteJesus... And here I've struggled with 2% increases and job consolidation from dupont while these people live a fantasy. I could never see any concrete results from ACS for me. How many more services could it offer if those numbers were put to more realistic use?
ReplyDeleteIn 1959, Barrett Strong expressed the feelings of ACS officers towards their compensation.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5KU34DrrPI
So... why doesn't president elect and similar positions draw a salary? Can anyone explain this?
ReplyDeleteThink of the ACS as a volunteer organization, where the board of directors (of which the President is one member) is unpaid.
DeleteThe board of directors hires the CEO, who administers the various functions of ACS. That person (the CEO) is paid, as are the rest of the staff.
Apparently the big dogs redirected chemist's salaries to their own. No hires, fired retirees returning to work part time, early retirements, and big savings from India. All healthy savings well spent on their salaries.
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