Sunday, December 11, 2016

ASAN's latest 990: A precarious financial situation?

Recently the premier neurodiversity organization The Autistic Self Advocacy Network, a 501(c) charitable organization, made public their latest (2015) 990 form.  Again, Ari Ne'eman increased his annual salary to nearly $90,000 a year in 2015 as can be seen by this page from the form below:

This is an approximately 6% pay raise from his 2014 salary which for Mr. Ne'eman is far more modest than his other increases.  In 2012 he increased his 2011 salary from $40,000 to $65,000, a 62% increase.  One of ASAN's numerous talking points has been the criticism of the high salaries that executives from autism speaks receive.  However, in 2012, Ne'eman's $71,000 salary was approximately twenty times higher than Autism Speaks' chief executive officer's $400,000 salary in ratio.

It would seem that the Autistic Self Advocacy Network was more fiscally responsible in 2015 than in previous years. However, looking at their tax form gives a clearer picture:

We see that while Ne'eman's salary had a slight increase, his organization's revenues had an approximately $150,000 dollar decrease from 2014's from about $765,000 to just under $618,000. In addition to Ne'eman, they apparently have other salaried employees and increased their employee compensation from about $270,000 in 2014 to about $365,000, a nearly $100,000 increase while their revenue dropped by $150,000.  Their form also shows that in 2015 they spent nearly $78,000 more than they took in in revenue.

I admit that I'm not an accountant or any kind of tax expert.  Perhaps there's something in the forms that I'm not reading correctly.  However, it would seem from a perusal of their statement that if this trend keeps up over a period of years this organization could become bankrupt at some point.  Though they still are in the black as far as their total assets are concerned.

Ari Ne'eman has announced that he will step down as president of ASAN and still serve on the board while his colleague Julia Bascom will take over as president of ASAN.  The timing of this may have been a coincidence, however, Gadfly has speculated that Ne'eman was counting on an appointment to a high fallutin' disabilities post in a Hillary Clinton administration.  In response to Donald Trump, Ne'eman has stated, "I don't work with fascists."  This means that if he keeps his promise, he would decline the same post in Donald Trump's new administration when they start January 20.  It should also mean that Samantha Crane or whoever else holds ASAN's seat on the Interagency Autism Coordinating Committee should resign as soon as Trump is Inaugurated.  Somehow I don't think that's going to happen.

Perhaps there's another reason for his stepping down as president.  Maybe he didn't want to be in charge of a sinking ship.