> all sorts of folk
Even if we did take your statement as a datapoint (hopefully one among many...), this clause could cover a small town or an entire continent.
It's amazing that in a community of Y-Combinator founders, there is such a malformed understanding of what it means to run a large organization.
Don't get me wrong, CEOs have inflated salaries. That is a society-wide problem, not just non-profits. To argue that non-profits should just forcibly change the bar for CEO salary (1) is the wrong place to enact this kind of social change, (2) would ensure that you only get the least qualifying candidates, (3) could lead CEOs into possibly devious action to increase personal wealth, and (4) could result in lower effort/efficiency as the CEO has to juggle other financial-fitness activities.
If CEO salary is important to you, there is tons of data out there to help you pick a similar charity with more agreeable administrative compensation. I hope that there aren't people out there who just don't donate because of this.
Not all of us have any relationship to Y-Combinator and/or the companies incubated by Y-Combinator (beyond perhaps using this site). I sure as hell don't.
> I hope that there aren't people out there who just don't donate because of this.
Sorry to shatter your hopes, but this is the exact reason why I'm averse to supporting the Susan G. Komen foundation in any way (well, that and them suing other charity organizations for running fundraisers that sound vaguely like "for the cure"; also, for continuing to shovel money into "awareness" instead of actual research).
If for-profit organizations find it beneficial to grow and expand using dedicated administrative staff, the assumption is that there would be benefits to growing a non-profit organization to a similar level. And while I'm sure there are ways to make it work, if we want them to run as well as for-profit companies are run, it stands to reason that dedicated administrative staff would provide greater returns to the organization (and their cause) over the cost of employing them.
If growing like that is an overall good thing is up for debate, but the idea that growing an organization requires dedicated and competent staff isn't really that shocking to me.