Chicago Museums Look Topheavy
In seeking new tax support, the Chicago museums might consider streamlining their management structures.
Recently, Chicago's Civic Federation (EIN 36-2170124 Form 990) proposed shifing government funding for the city's museums (the nine "Museums in the Park" plus the Brookfield & Lincoln Park Zoos and the Chicago Botanic Garden—listed below) from property tax to a one-quarter-percent sales tax. The proposal would raise about $120 million a year compared to the current, declining subsidy from the Chicago Park District of about $32 million. The recommendation is that $65 million go to the museums for operations and debt service, $40 million go to capital projects and the balance go to other cultural organizations through a grant process. There did not seem to be a great deal of press comment about the proposal.
But I took at look at the organizations and found some remarkable numbers (detail here in this chart PDF 71Kb). The twelve organizations have combined Form 990 revenue of over a half billion dollars, more than 10% larger than the revenue of the Smithsonian, but only about an eighth that of Harvard. But the total compensation of key employees (including CEOs and other executives) was $8.9 million for the Chicago museums, compared to $2.8 million for both the Smithsonian and Harvard, over three times as large.
The administrative staff costs are comparable for the Smithsonian and the Chicago Museums, about $25 million for each, and these are about half that of Harvard, an organization eight times as large. It is not clear why musuems need so much administrative staff relative to a university, though it may be a matter of classification.
Overall staffing of the Chicago Museums is about 20% less than the Smithsonian and about a fifth of Harvard's.
So the big anomaly is the huge amount of executive compensation at the Chicago Museums. If these organizations want to benefit from governmental support, perhaps they should get their own houses in order first.
The Adler Planetarium
36-6210902
Form 990
The Art Institute of Chicago
36-2167725
Form 990
The Chicago Academy of Sciences (Notebaert Museum)
36-0895575
Form 990
The Chicago Historical Society
36-2167004
Form 990
The DuSable Museum of African American History
36-2524811
Form 990
The Field Museum
36-2167011
Form 990
The Mexican Fine Arts Center Museum
36-3225519
Form 990
The Museum of Science and Industry
36-2167797
Form 990
The Shedd Aquarium
36-2167918
Form 990
Lincoln Park Zoo
36-2512404
Form 990
Brookfield Zoo
36-2167016
Form 990
Chicago Botanic Garden
36-2225482
Form 990
Chicago Community Trust (EIN 36-2167000 Form 990) funded the study by the Civic Federation.
I'm don't know how to read the numbers in the chart. To take the field museum, for example, if we assume that there are 10 "executives and key people", then the average income of the remaining 614 employees would be about $1450 a year. Or the Harvard # would be $2300 a year. That can't be right. They sound a bit like monthly numbers, but the total budget is clearly an annual figure.
Posted by: peter krause | May 24, 2006 at 12:55 PM
Let me get this right: the staff headcount is all the staff, not just the administrative staff. The G&A compensation is just the compensation of the non-key-employee administrative staff. The officer, director and key employee compensation includes all the compensation, even for program officers. The idea of the comparison is to show how the compensation of the top dogs compares to the compensation for the back office administrative staff.
Posted by: underalms | May 24, 2006 at 01:39 PM