The Ayn Rand Institute took in  $ 10,895,393  during the fiscal year ending September 30, 2015,  the latest fiscal year for which such financial information is publicly available at the time of this writing (2017).  Here we set aside the source of this revenue [1]  and focus on how it was spent.

Though incorporated as a nonprofit ARI rewards many of its employees with, in effect, a handsome profit of their own. In FYE 9-30-2015 – we’ll call it simply 2015 – ARI’s board of directors compensated its key employees, in some cases themselves, as follows:

The above figures are from ARI’s  “Return of Organization Exempt From Income Tax”  better known as Form 990.  The U.S. Treasury Department, IRS division, requires nonprofit corporations to submit this form not long after the end of each fiscal year. It is public and several websites that monitor charities make them available online. [2]

Our table doesn’t cover all of ARI’s employees, not even those pulling down six figures. The Form 990 rules allow nondisclosure of an employee’s compensation if he meets certain criteria. As long as he is not too high up in the organization and his compensation is less than  $ 150,000 then ARI needn’t disclose his compensation, and with ARI need not means shall not. [3]

However the form does contain this item:

Of the part-time key employees one was well paid, Tara Smith. She received  $ 5,500 for two hours work per week. As a rate this is equivalent to  $ 110,000 for a 40 hour week.

The board has always known how to compensate themselves. Back in 1993 they proposed to pay board members Harry Binswanger and Peter Schwartz a total of  $ 45,000 – about  $ 75,600 in today’s dollars – to teach one course each, lasting six or seven weeks. When the Reismans (George and Edith, also board members) objected to the cost they were declared immoral and thrown out of ARI. “They” being the Reismans, in case that wasn’t clear. [4]

For several years past two of Mr. Brook’s children have been employed part-time at ARI. One was still employed in 2015. Under the heading “Business Transactions Involving Interested Persons” we find that his compensation was  $ 21,415.  The form doesn’t provide the hours per week.

The total cost (including payroll taxes) of all employees, key or otherwise, was  $ 5,171,237. [5]  This was about half of ARI’s total expenses.

These figures are only part of the whole picture, they leave out some substantial perks. Mr. Brook frequently lectures outside the U.S. urging people to be selfish – Britain, Europe, Scandinavia, China, Southeast Asia. As I write Mr. Brook is preaching to the heathen in Bogotá, Colombia. Doubtless for these trips ARI pays his transportation, hotel and restaurant bills; the host might also pay a fee. In a BlogTalkRadio show not long ago he told the audience he wants to lecture in New Zealand because he would love to visit that country. On another show, broadcast from London, he said he always flies business class.

Mr. Brook is not the only globetrotter at ARI, and he and other ARI people travel within the U.S. as well. Form 990 doesn’t break down the cost by employee or destination but there is an item called Travel after which is Total Expenses:  $ 377,716.

... Join the army and see the world !

Froggy, lecturing in Asia and so forth reflects ARI’s globalist perspective. Donate to ARI and help convert the Chinese to something or other, it’s not clear what anymore.

The compensation for ARI people has increased steadily over the years. For example take Mark Chapman, who began at ARI in 2003. His compensation for the next fiscal year (considered instead of the first to ensure he had worked a full year) was  $ 127,833, and as we have seen by 2015 it had grown to  $ 327,795 (same job title). This far outstripped inflation over the same period, which was about 25%.

I don’t know what being Vice President of Development entails but I can imagine ARI replying that Mr. Chapman was always worth 328 thousand and had been grossly underpaid to begin with at only 128.

Mr. Brook began at ARI in 2000.  In 2002, the year of the earliest Form 990 available online, Mr. Brook’s compensation was  $ 160,000 ( $ 211,400 in 2015 dollars ), and as we have seen by 2015 it had ballooned to  $ 441,718. The grand total of his compensation from 2002 to 2015 comes to  $ 4,677,404.  If we include conservative estimates for the two years 2000 and 2001, and the so far undocumented year 2016, then at the time of this writing (2017) Mr. Brook’s accumulated compensation has been well over five million dollars.  Taking into consideration that the dollar was worth more in the earlier years, Mr. Brook’s accumulated compensation amounts to about six million of today’s dollars.  At ARI charity begins at home – on steroids.

Yet at times Mr. Brook pretends — well, let him tell us. In a talk given March 26, 2014 called “Anti-Capitalism and Anti-Semitism” he said, and self-righteously, “I’m not rich.”  Next month, April 17, in a debate with James Galbraith called “Inequality: Should We Care?” he said that someone might choose to make a lot of money or else “They might choose to be a professor or teacher, like myself or Dr. Galbraith, and condemn themselves to a life of lower middle class-hood.”

In round numbers,  $ 44,000 a year and he’s lower middle-class, one misfortune away from sinking into poverty.

... Hey, you misplaced the decimal point !

In round numbers,  $ 440,000 a year and he’s lower-mid— oh skip it.

Yet at other times Mr. Brook might boast of his high pay. Before working at ARI  he co-founded (in 1994) a company called Lyceum International that specialized in what he called Objectivist conferences and distance-learning courses. One seminar series Lyceum offered in 1999 was titled  “Profit is Moral Seminars”  evidently directed at corporate executives. The first of these seminars was  “Executive Pay: The Sky’s the Limit.”  Here’s how Lyceum’s website described it:

The term “nonprofit corporation” is misleading. Any business, even a nominal nonprofit, runs on money. Money has no meaning to an inanimate object or thing, it has meaning only to people, and as we have seen it is possible for people who control a nonprofit to extract a lot of money out of it.

According to Form 990, in 2015 non-key employee salaries and wages totaled  $ 2,737,346.  (Supposedly this includes the three people earning between  $ 100,000 and  $ 150,000 not listed in the table of key employees we began with.) [7]

Per the form, ARI had 64 employees. [8]  In addition there were 103 volunteers.

... Hey people, I saw him type “suckers” and then backspace over it.

That’s enough out of you Froggy. Perhaps there were some volunteers who understood what ARI’s idea of “changing the culture” really means – the Cultural Leftist “long march through the institutions” – and agreed with it.

So much for ARI members’ pay, what might be called ARI’s internal disbursements. How about external disbursements, money ARI gives to people outside of ARI ?  After all, this is supposed to be a charitable organization.

ARI’s external disbursements do not all go to charity however, there are operating expenses to pay such as electricity, water, phone lines, office space, Internet service, etc. Regarding outflow, let’s consider the non-charity part before we consider the charity part.

As we already noted Form 990 provides a fair amount of information about total dollar amounts but is weak on individual breakdown. However it does list individual contractors that received over  $ 100,000. Here they are for 2015:

Now for charity—

... Hey ARI people, here’s my empty hat !  Can you spare  $ 5,000 for a cup of coffee ?

Froggy, that’s ridiculous.  You can get a nice cup of coffee for three dollars.

... Yes, but I want to drink it in Bogotá while Yaron Brook lectures me about being selfish.

Good grief.  As I was saying, now for charity.  ARI’s advertising makes much of two programs:  giving away copies of Rand’s books to high school and middle school students and teachers, and sponsoring essay contests for students.

Giving away copies of Rand’s novels is little to boast about. Most every intelligent high school student finds out about Rand’s novels on his own. If Leonard Peikoff wanted to make the books more accessible he would lower the retail price. Instead, right after Rand’s death he raised it substantially, even as the print quality went down. [9]

ARI’s free book program has a steep downside in that each book comes with an advertisement for ARI printed on the cover. Seeing this and visiting ARI’s website, the hapless neophyte learns about the unalloyed goodness of unlimited immigration, the necessity of supporting Israel, that we must blow up Iran – and that all this follows from Objectivism.

As for the essay contests, the total awards is chump change. Per Form 990 there were 84 essay contest winners and they received a grand total of $32,030.  ARI spends more on postage.

... Hey you ARI people, what happened to my essay?

Froggy, I told you enclosing that selfie was a bad idea. Now the problem with the essay contest is that it is ARI people who judge the essays. If your essay were to argue that restricting immigration is per Objectivism selfish, that the Immigration Act of 1965 was the most evil piece of legislation ever, with second place going to most of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which took away freedom of association and that violated private property rights on a massive scale), you can forget about ARI awarding you a prize no matter how well you argue and write.

Form 990 contains a section headed “Describe the organization’s program service accomplishments ...”  Only a small fraction of the listed accomplishments are benevolent. The rest contain a significant dose of malicious propaganda which ARI calls education. The food may look good but it’s salted with arsenic.

Several of ARI’s accomplishments for 2015 have an internationalist bent (paraphrasing):

Here is a complete list of ARI’s non-payroll expenses:

ARI’s payroll expenses:

ARI’s total expenses (payroll plus non-payroll) comes to  $ 10,943,824.  ARI’s total revenue was  $ 10,895,393.  Thus it would appear they were in the red  $ 48,431.  Elsewhere the form says ARI’s total expenses were  $ 10,615,858, and that they were in the black  $ 279,535 – they had something left over for next year. The second figures are probably correct and some payroll expense is included in our non-payroll list.

In other articles we saw how the people at the self-described Ayn Rand Institute corrupt its namesake’s ideas. In this article we see them becoming millionaires while they do it. Obleftivism is where the money is.

That they are getting rich isn’t the problem. If they called their organization “The Frankfurt Institute” or “The Neocon Institute” or “The Anti Defamation League, Irvine Branch” this article wouldn’t be necessary. What disgusts is that they are getting rich milking the name “Ayn Rand” while perverting her ideas.