Chamber's Exec. Committee Extends Schreiber's Contract; Pay Not Disclosed

By Desiree Parker Wednesday, December 22, 2010

The executive committee of the Greater Williamsburg Chamber and Tourism Alliance has decided to extend the president’s contract through 2013, information they shared with the rest of the board of directors last week.

Alliance President and CEO Dick Schreiber has been with the organization since 2005. Though the executive committee doesn’t share salary information as a general rule, even with the Alliance’s board of directors, according to 2009 tax records (the most recent available) Schreiber earned a combined income of $268,200 the year previous. None of the government officials WYDaily spoke with were aware of Schreiber’s salary, including one official who serves on the Alliance’s Board of Directors, though combined local governments contributed $2.3 million to the Alliance in the Alliance’s fiscal year 2009.

According to Guidestar, an organization based in Williamsburg that gathers and publishes financial data from nearly all national nonprofits,
there’s no rule of thumb for determining appropriate nonprofit executive pay. Guidestar, however, recommends looking at the pay of executives at comparable organizations when determining what’s fair.

No one WYDaily contacted either knew or would say what Schreiber's current compensation is. According to tax records filed by the Alliance, Schreiber’s salary and other compensation after a nearly $62,000 raise in 2008 was approximately $268,200. The total revenue of the Alliance for 2008 based on their 2009 990 tax forms was $3.1 million, of which local governments funded $2.3 million. Schreiber’s salary was nearly nine percent of the organization’s total income.

The Alliance recently commissioned a tourism destination study, which looked at other tourist locations in the country comparable to Williamsburg, including Savannah, Ga., and Asheville, S.C. Based on 2009 tax forms, the president of Asheville’s Chamber of Commerce (the comparable nonprofit in that area) had a salary and other compensation totaling about $264,800. The organization had annual revenues of $3.8 million, $1.7 of which came from local governments, putting the president’s pay at 6.9 percent of the organization’s income.

Savannah’s joint chamber of commerce and convention and visitors bureau (organized like Williamsburg’s Alliance) had total revenues in 2008 of $7.3 million. The president and CEO of the organization had a salary and other compensation totaling $324,000, or 3.8 percent of the organization’s total income.

The convention and visitors bureau in Orlando, Fla., with annual revenues of $40.9 million, paid its chief executive officer about $339,400 in 2008, less than one percent of the organization’s total income.

Looking more locally, Hampton Roads Chamber of Commerce, which had revenues in 2008 of $3.7 million, paid its president $227,900 (which was reduced from $231,800 the year before), which constituted about six percent of the group’s total income.

According to the International Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus 2002 salary survey, the median for total CEO compensation was $233,051 for groups with a budget of $7.5 million or more, or 3.1 percent or less of total revenue.

Since the recession began in 2008, local governments have had to significantly scale back contributions to organizations like the Alliance due to reduced revenues. Due to a sharp decline in room and meal tax dollars, the city of Williamsburg proposed reducing the Alliance’s funding from $880,000 to $627,000 in the current fiscal year (2011), though the city later agreed to add back $50,000.

James City County cut funding to the Alliance by $100,000 in 2011, and York County cut funding by $20,000 in 2011. The Alliance’s most recent available tax forms don’t represent these cuts or the reduction in membership revenues due to 30 hoteliers withdrawing from the Alliance in July 2009, meaning Schreiber’s salary is now a higher percentage of the organization’s revenue.

Williamsburg Mayor Clyde Haulman said the city funds the Alliance to support their work as advocates for businesses and for tourism promotion.

As for his thoughts on the Alliance’s executive compensation, “We give funds to these agencies and expect them to use the funds wisely,” Haulman said, “but we don’t tie our contributions to salaries, we tie them to the purpose of the organization. We’re not in the business of making their business decisions.”

Haulman said he did not know the amount of Schreiber’s salary, though. Neither did James City County Board Chairman Jim Kennedy, but he agreed with Haulman that the county’s goal when funding the Alliance was to fund tourism promotion.

Kennedy suggested speaking with John McGlennon, the Board of Supervisors member who currently serves on the Alliance’s board. McGlennon did not know Schreiber’s salary, either.

McGlennon said local tax dollars contributed to the Alliance (which totaled $2.3 million in the Alliance’s fiscal year 2009) go directly to tourism generation, marketing and the like, not to salaries or other overhead costs, which the county’s finance department corroborated.

Based on the Alliance’s 2009 tax forms, however, the income generated by member dues, fundraising events, special projects and other income amounted to roughly $775,000, which was not enough to cover employee salaries ($716,200) and  top executives ($346,800) without some use of taxpayer funds.

McGlennon suggested the higher executive salary amount might be explained by the Alliance’s dual role as a chamber of commerce and a CVB.

The Alliance’s board of directors, a 35-member group, doesn’t negotiate the executive contracts or pay as a whole body. Those decisions are left to the 13-member executive committee, chaired this year by Joe Cantrell. Cantrell let the board know last Thursday that Schreiber’s contract had been renewed.

Cantrell said the members of the executive committee “all feel that Dick has done a good job over the past years, especially in the face of a tough economy. This is a critical time [for the Alliance]; not only are we facing economic challenges, but we’re launching new initiatives we’ve never tried before, and [Vice President] Bob Hershberger left last year, so we felt it was critical to have continuity at the top.”

Schreiber’s contract was set to expire on September 30, 2011, and was renewed through 2013.

When asked how the executive committee measured the success of a president, Cantrell said the committee has an extensive annual performance review process in which they consider whether the Alliance has met a majority of its annual goals. The committee also looks at what outside circumstances might have influenced performance that were not controllable  - like the recession.

Schreiber has consistently done a good job and “he has a proven track record,” Cantrell said.

As for the $268,200 salary Schreiber makes (based on 2009 tax forms), Cantrell said it wasn’t committee practice to discuss numbers, but he said the executive committee “did an informal review to compare other like-sized chambers and CVBs on Guidestar” to come up with a reasonable pay amount, which “fell into the middle or just above middle” range.

“We wanted to try to make sure he is fairly compensated at the market rate,” he said. “[Schreiber’s] salary has to be competitive.”

The IRS is interested in nonprofit executives' fair compensation at the going rate, too.

The Wall Street Journal in April 2009 reported that Lois Lerner, the IRS’s director of tax-exempt organizations, warned nonprofits that the IRS will be scrutinizing nonprofit tax forms, and that leaders should be sure to practice due diligence in making sure their executive pay can be justified through data on comparable practices at similar organizations.

"If you're not looking, we're looking," Lerner said at Georgetown University Law Center's Representing & Managing Tax-Exempt Organizations conference, according to the article. Read the full Wall Street Journal story here.