Autistics Speak for Themselves

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Autism Speaks has released its 2008 990 tax return form, which is the primary source of the following information regarding its finances. According to their 990, Autism Speaks has 36 employees who were compensated over $100,000 this year. The highest paid employee listed, their Chief Science Officer, Geri Dawson, was compensated $644,274. That's better than most people make in fairly good positions at Fortune 500 companies! Shockingly, she makes more than the five people listed in the form as "highest compensated employees", who are listed as being compensated less than $150,000 each by Autism Speaks. Where's the rest of that money that they didn't report, and how much is it to make them more highly compensated than someone getting almost $650,000 from a non-profit organization? All of the "highest compensated employees" are in some sort of administrative or "relations" position, meaning that they're part of the Autism Speaks bureaucracy and overhead, except for one who is listed as "Senior Policy Advisor and Counsel", which could mean that he's part of their oversized legal department, known for threatening people who make t-shirts or parodies to express their displeasure with Autism Speaks (false allegations of copyright violation were the bulk of those cases). Not including federated fundraising money, Autism Speaks spent over $1.7 million on fundraiser expenses, and made only $142,693 from that investment (that's the net gain, or what's left after that $1.7 million+ is subtracted from the total monies gained from the fundraisers). In total, they spent $17,756,876 on employee salaries, pensions/401ks, benefits, and payroll taxes. By contrast, their grants to individuals and communities totaled a paltry $66,670, not even a drop in the bucket compared to their total reported expenditures. Based on that information, it is clear that Autism Speaks does very little with their money to help autistic people and their families,