Thanks to an anonymous UOF Board member for suggesting I post this info.
From 2022 to 2023, UO Foundation CEO Paul (Ronald) Weinhold’s pay increased 23%, to $642,673. CFO Kelly Bosch’s pay increased $54%, to $317,846.
From 2013 to 2023, Weinhold’s pay increased by 101%. The pay for the average UO faculty member increased from $89,900 to $122,900, or 35%.
This money comes from an annual tax that the Foundation charges on the value of endowment gifts.
This of course is not “PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL” information, despite the Foundation’s scary words below. It comes from the IRS 990 forms that the Foundation is required to provide to anyone who asks, and which Propublico eventually posts here. Many not-for-profits post these on their websites, but not Weinhold and Bosch – who also run out the allowable extensions, so that the numbers for the fiscal year that ended June 30 will not be public until May 15 2015. I’ve posted the 2023 reports here and here.
From: “Kelly Bosch (UO Foundation Accounting Department)” <[email protected]>Subject: RE: IRS 990 request [Request updated: #80355]Date: July 9, 2024 at 7:51:58 AM PDTTo: Bill Harbaugh <[email protected]>Reply-To: UO Foundation Accounting Department <[email protected]>##- Please type your reply above this line -##Your request (80355) has been updated. To add additional comments, reply to this email.
Jul 9, 2024, 07:51 PDT
Good morning,
Please find the attached fiscal year ended 2023 Federal 990 tax returns for the UO Foundation and the UO Foundation Supporting Organization.
Thank you,
Kelly
This information, and any attachment, is PRIVILEGED and CONFIDENTIAL property of the University of Oregon Foundation. Any unauthorized reproduction, dissemination or disclosure is prohibited.
$5M to Wheels Up Private Jets for prepaid airfare? Sounds luxurious.
Given how tightly strapped for cash JH claims UO is, you might wonder why the Foundation gave Weinhold and Bosch these raises, instead of transferring the money to UO for educational purposes. This is secret, because the Oregon DOJ has decided the Foundation is exempt from our public records law but the IRS requires them to put down something. See page 51 of the pdf:
IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE
REBUTTABLE PRESUMPTION OF REASONABLENESS, THE [Compensation] COMMITTEE USED COMPARABILITY
DATA OF REGIONAL COMPARABLE UNIVERSITIES AND THEIR RELATED FOUNDATIONS,
EVALUATED THE PRESIDENT’S PERFORMANCE AGAINST GOALS AND OBJECTIVES
ESTABLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE, AND ENSURED THE PACKAGE WAS IN LINE WITH
INTERNAL EQUITY AND THE MARKET.
In other words they used pretty much the same procedure that the UAUO faculty union used to come up with their raise proposal – get us to average in 4 years – which President Scholz has rejected out of hand.
So will Scholz – in the interest of consistency – now use his authority under Oregon law to move the UO endowment to some less expensive foundation?
If Kelly received a 54% pay bump, doesn’t that mean her pay was ridiculously low to begin with for a CFO in charge of such a large amount of money? I don’t know many places giving out 50%+ raises, seems more like an equity adjustment to avoid getting sued by underpaying a woman. No comment on Paul, I don’t even know what he does.
Looking at 2022–which is (or soon) three pay cycles ago so pay is probably up from there–I have a few questions.
** Returns still do not beat a plain old ETF.
** Anyone know why the liabilities jumped up so high? I am no Accountant but is it good that liabilities are almost 1/3 the gross assets?
** I see that somewhere in 2020-2022 they got rid (all?) )their Asset managers (also the time the liabilities spike?) Did they move it out of house?
** Looks like they pay nearly as much (and years more) in Administration as they do in good old scholarships and grants.
** Although the top line is nearly $2.5B after liabilities and strings they really only have like $40M unrestricted… Is there any reason they do not take a tax on all giving something simple like 15% of the bequest must go to an unrestricted endowment? If only.
** Looking at OSU it does seem executive compensation as % of total expenses is 1/2 at UO (if that is worth anything/
OSU and UO have different models. The UOF is just a bank for the UO it doesn’t fundraise for the UO. The UOF has less than 50 employees and did move the investments to an outside firm.
What does PW do to earn that salary which should be going back to the UO for the good of the many.
As far as KB’s salary goes, I’m sure she works her ass off trying to cover for her boss. She deserves every penny until she decides to turn him in.
The “private and confidential” bit is a standard email signature. Maybe don’t create headlines out of such trivial and normal things? Also, I’ve worked for a few non-profits and all of them file for extensions to solidify financial statements/tax documents.
Applying a “standard email signature” declaring privilege and confidentiality where they do not apply is sloth and/or deception; attributes I always hope to find in organizations like the UOF.
I like “prohibited” – meant to make you think you’re going to get in trouble with the law if you post their secrets. And they did threaten to sue me once. FWIW the first time I asked the UOF for their 990 they left off the schedule that shows salaries. An honest mistake I’m sure. Speaking of illegal deception, my favorite Weinhold moment is on video – him promising the full faith and credit of the Foundation’s $1B endowment to Lamine Diack in exchange for the World Track and Field championships: https://uomatters.com/2020/03/uo-foundation-ceo-paul-weinhold-pledges-full-faith-credit-of-1b-endowment-to-maintaining-uos-academic-mission.html
The FY ending June 30 2023 was a bad one for the Foundation – they earned 2.5% on the endowment, far below their own benchmark return of 9.4%. The median university earned 4.5%. It seems that Weinhold’s decision to outsource investment decisions to the expensive MBA’s at Jasper Ridge is not paying off, at least in the short term. https://www.pionline.com/endowments-and-foundations/university-oregon-misses-return-benchmark-fiscal-year
Warren Buffett could tell them for free to save their money and invest in low cost index funds, or ETFs if they want to be more adventurous.
UOM did I totally miss the boat or did the Propublica data change? I am pretty sure that I saw in The 999 Sch. J for 2022 the same salaries you quote above: it now shows for CEO 642,361 and for CFO 306,020; also it looks like the filing date has changed as well as changes in quite a few other numbers that no longer match up?
$11k is 1099-NEC (independent contractor non employee) compensation. Who knows. Maybe a board stipend.
Hey, it’s America. 90% of raises go to the top 4 executives. I wonder if the direct reports get more than a 3% raise.
Jamie Moffitt is on the Summit Bank board? Then they are all involved in the UOF board, Summit bank, and Launch Oregon…https://www.launchoregon.com/about
They came to do good and they did well.
Well, Jeff, I suppose we can put your hypothesis to the test… numbers don’t lie, do they? Let’s examine this Robert Erick individual listed there. According to his LinkedIn page here, https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberterick/, he’s been with the foundation for 20 years. He holds a CPA, a B.A. in Accounting, a B.A. in Computer Science, and computer certs.
The data indicates he left earning $106k. He likely started at $50k two decades ago. When we calculate $50,000 multiplied by 1.38 to the power of 20, we get $106k. This suggests, on average, he received a 3.8% raise each year for 20 years. Shall we verify that? It appears he earned $106,737 in his final year, up from $102,685 the previous year, an increase of 3.95%. However, it seems there was a promotion from accounting director to financial something. I guess that came with a 3.9% raise? Anyway, looks like his finally moved on from the grind (or psyop). Probably promoted his position for more than they were paying him.
Your hypothesis is indeed correct. Wonder what a fly on the wall for 20 years of reviews would have heard…monotonous 3.9% increases.
But wait there’s more. If they’re doling out 4-5 raises of 20% each year (let’s assume 4), then over a span of 20 years, that’s 4 x 20 = 80 significant raises during that period. Reviewing 20 of these government forms over 20 years and comparing salary increases, it’s quite remarkable he remained there for two decades. I believe they need a loyalty rewards programme.
A prime example of why one might think twice about venturing into accounting mlm
Huh? Hmmm…4 promotions. They must have been title changes without raises. Odd.
It looks to me that Kelly’s increase was more like 317/264 – 1 = about 20%…a lot of the other item is health insurance. It might be fine. You can search propublica and see the salary progressions if search by person and you be the judge. 20% per year seems to be an average increase or 7-8 years. Such increases will double a salary every 3.5 years.
The UOF invests in many investments that issue k-1s, and if those k-1 have extensions that the UOF’s return gets pushed out. The delay in filing is mostly inevitable. The issue of whether Jasper Ridge is performing or not can be big. I believe Paul has been cutting back his hours so…not a full time job. The auditors are KPMG, so the financial statements should be reliable. Liabilities are flat, so not a concern. There is a large liability that is essentially waiting to become revenue…sitting and waiting to become revenue, and that’s the main reason liabilities are so high. UOF *does* “tax” funds received…they are “assessments”.
I do not understand if a Board member forwarded this information to you, why didn’t that Board member uphold their fiduciary duty and contact the President of the university, DOJ or the IRS? Furthermore, there are two people on the 990 that received $300K salaries who didn’t work at the UOF—golden parachutes at a non-profit?
According to the IRS: “ If the IRS determines that a nonprofit is paying excessive compensation to its highest-paid employees, the organization may face heavy penalties. These penalties could include: An IRS inquiry or nonprofit audit, State-level investigation, Large fines, Tax on excessive executive compensation, and Revocation of federal tax exemption.” Someone must do something!
Comment seems right about Kelly being historically underpaid relative to her position. Will be interesting to see how their investment performance is prospectively, as I believe Jasper Ridge has quite a bit of money under management so I wouldn’t think expectations would be for returns to be more than average at best relative to other like universities.
Well. I guess classified staff, GE’s, and student workers can just eat their “fabulous” wage gains. And utter lack of extras (free housing, cell, internet, transportation, other utilities, food food food and more food, conferences, trips to sports games, etc etc etc).
Interesting dialogue here and many of the comments are essentially valid. It is true in principle that you should pay oversight individuals reasonably. One aspect that seems to get missed is many organizations have lots of dedicated and committed individuals who are not in the spotlight. For example, there may be an individual who works through many of the phases related to audit period (June 1 to August 31)—closing JEs, preparing workpapers, disclosures, etc. and for a 2 decades takes a single 4 day vacation and a week to spend with a dying mother. Stuff like that is often overlooked and would never appear on a performance evaluation or be alluded to in a conversation, but goes toward indicating a high level dedication. In perspective, such dedication is often laughably irrelevant. Just something to keep in mind.
It’s about time for the Foundation to post their fiscal-year return. The first couple of years with Jasper Ridge managing the Foundation’s assets have been quite poor, so we’ll see what this year brings. The median university endowment return is about 10.5% this fiscal year. I’ve heard Jasper Ridge’s main secret sauce is buying a lot of private equity and venture capital on the secondary market at discounts. Given their bloated aum that would not seem to be a great area to exploit inefficiencies in this market. Will be interesting to see how the expensive suits do, and if there’s any ramifications if they have another lousy year.
it looks like they issued 10/26 last year, so it’s about time. maybe delayed with personnel issues. they have this on their website: Accounting Manager, Salary Description $110,000 per year. maybe $4k more than the guy listed above.
Their financials are posted. They spent $5.3 million on software.