Mmmm, mmmm, mmmm....wow...who knew? Imagine if the officers of SAC and the founders of First Friday took such a salary? (Full disclosure: SAC and FFML folks make and take NOTHING! It's pure volunteerism) This sure makes people wonder....should we go to National Night Out Tuesday August 7th? Read the article and decide:

Nonprofit is lucrative for founder
By Andrew Maykuth
Inquirer Staff Writer

When he launched the first National Night Out in 1984, Matt A. Peskin envisioned an event in which people across America would turn on their lights and sit on their porches in a symbolic gesture to fight crime.

The Wynnewood man's idea quickly evolved into a night of coordinated neighborhood block parties. Peskin says about 11,000 communities will celebrate National Night Out on Aug. 7. Millions of Americans will participate.

Little did Peskin imagine that his concept would grow and endure, thanks partly to federal subsidies of $2.7 million in the last 10 years.

And nobody imagined the event would reward Peskin so richly.

His organization, the National Association of Town Watch, devoted about a third of its budget in 2005 to pay Peskin a $255,000 salary and $42,000 in benefits, according to the group's most recent tax filings.

According to the NonProfit Times, a business publication covering nonprofit management, the average salary for a charity with less than $1 million in annual revenue - the size of Peskin's organization - is about $70,000. Peskin's pay is in line with that of chief executives of large nonprofits with annual revenue greater than $50 million, according to the trade journal.

Peskin is paid more than any federal official other than the president, who makes $400,000. He is paid more than the governor of any state - Gov. Rendell makes about $164,000 this year. Law enforcement officials don't make what he makes. The Philadelphia police commissioner makes $143,000, and the Pennsylvania State Police commissioner is paid $125,000. They manage departments with thousands of employees....One reason the association can afford to pay Peskin so handsomely is that American taxpayers subsidize about a third of his organization's $900,000 budget. The Justice Department last year gave Peskin's association a $296,000 crime-prevention grant.

While the grants for National Night Out are a fraction of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's annual $1.5 billion budget, the money continues to flow even as violent crime is increasing and local law enforcement officials complain about reductions in federal assistance.

Some studies indicate that neighborhood-watch programs are not effective at reducing crime because they do not fundamentally change the behavior of criminals.

Town watch has "no effect on violent crime," said Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. "And events like National Night Out - one night of marching and protesting - there's zero evidence that works."

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