Al Sharpton’s “National Action Network” charity has been extremely charitable to Sharpton and his family.
Last year Sharpton raked in $1,046,948 from his charity ($324,000 in salary and the rest in bonuses and “other compensation”), and and he’s spreading the wealth around this year.
According to the New York Post:
The National Action Network paid Sharpton’s 33-year-old daughter Ashley Sharpton $63,250 last year to do social media work and consulting, and gave $13,750 to his niece, Nikki Sharpton, 45, for special-event work in NAN’s Atlanta bureau, according to the group’s most recent tax filing, which was obtained by The Post.
And NAN gave a $5,000 grant to Kathy Jordan Sharpton, 64, the reverend’s wife from whom he separated in 2004. It was listed on the form as scholarship money.
Sharpton meanwhile gave himself a minor raise of 1%, bringing his salary to $327,570.
Last year the Network raised $7.8 million and spent $7.5 million, meaning that compensation for Sharpton alone that year totaled 14% of total expenses. Perhaps that’s defensible if we’re to assume that the Network is also a charity for Sharpton himself. A quarter of all expenses that year were related to transportation, with $777,623 paid to the high-end car service Carey International.
According to Charity Navigator, the median compensation for a charity CEO that has over $500 million in annual expenses is $422,578, while it’s $95,661 for charities with expenses between $1-3.5 million. Those were their estimates as of 2013, but even if we were to assume a 3% annual raise for charity CEOs since then it would still be the case that Sharpton’s 2019 compensation still isn’t even in line with what you’d expect if he were running a charity nearly 70 times as large.
The Network has been no stranger to controversy before. Like Sharpton himself, the charity has had tax troubles – in 2006 having owed the IRS over $1.9 million in payroll taxes and penalties. The Network has also been criticized by the NY Post for operating like a mafia – allegedly threatening to protest and boycott certain companies that they’d then solicit donations and sponsorships from.
