Vivent Health Rakes in Donations, Pays Big Salaries

Brandon Hill. Photo provided.

For 35 years it was known the AIDs Resource Center of Wisconsin and was a favorite of many donors. Then, after merging with a Madison organization and with other groups in five other states, the organization in 2020 became known as Vivent Health. It was now much bigger but still a United Way-funded nonprofit headquartered in Milwaukee and with the same mission.

“For more than 40 years, we… have been relentless in the fight against HIV, from advocating for policy change to protecting communities through prevention efforts to welcoming and caring for all who come through our doors,” its website declares. “We offer people living with HIV the highest-quality care, including wraparound social services designed to support the whole person. And perhaps most of all, we provide a safe, judgment-free zone for everyone we serve…”

Its budget has meanwhile grown tremendously — to $72.9 million in the most recent year (2023-24) for which a federal 990 tax form was filed. That year its CEO Brandon Hill received $741,330 in total compensation, with executive VP and CFO Timothy Dyer getting $562,654, its chief medical officer Leslie Cockerham getting $440,715 and chief pharmacy officer Anthony Fields getting $432,815.

Given that Vivent Health is tax-exempt nonprofit that is subsidized by the taxpayers and heavily dependent on charitable donations, with about 38% of its budget coming from donations, these are eyebrow-raising salaries. Over the past 4 years Vivent has gotten $105 million in gifts, grants and contributions and more than $8 million of its budget went to its four top employees.

The salaries also seem high when compared to other nonprofits. A 2021-22 study of nonprofit compensation found that the average CEO pay was $166,966 but rose with the size of an organization: for organizations with a budget of more than $50 million the average CEO pay was $364,564. Vivent’s CEO earns more than double this.

When asked how Vivent determined its compensation, its VP of strategic communication, Cindy Cooper, stated that the organization’s executive compensation is “Analyzed… by an outside organization specializing in health care and not-for-profit/tax-exempt organizations; Monitored and evaluated annually against… AIDS Services organizations, healthcare organizations, and non-profits of similar size and scope of work; Voted on in an executive session of the Board of Directors; and Published publicly on our website.”

But it is very difficult to find these salaries on the website: there is nothing on the home page, but if you click on a link next to “Request an Appointment,” this takes you to a page where you can click on “Our Story,” which takes you to a page where you can click on “Financials and Annual Reports,” though if you click on annual reports they do not list any salaries. You must know enough to click on “IRS Form 990” and then scroll down some 35 pages for the full compensation figures.

Vivent Health has a 20-member board of directors, and curiously, not one of them is from Milwaukee. Yet many Milwaukee and Wisconsin organizations are funders. Vivent’s long list of donors includes the Greater Milwaukee Foundation (GMF), Associated Bank and the Forest County Potawatomi Foundation, among some 50 other organizations. The GMF has regularly donated to the group: “total grant funding to ARCW/Vivent from 1987 to present is about $3.9 million,” according to Jeremy Podolski, its director of public relations.

ARCW/Vivent has also received United Way funding for decades, getting a grant of $229,791 in 2023-24 and $249,000 in 2022-23, according to United Way’s federal tax forms. If United Way donors knew that Vivent’s CEO made three times as much in compensation as the United Way donation to his group, would they still want their money going to it?

Last February, in an interview with Urban Milwaukee, United Way of Milwaukee County & Waukesha County president and CEO Amy Lindner defended the salaries going to top Vivent executives. “If you look corporations of the same size and type it wouldn’t surprise me if its salaries were at the same rate or higher,” she said.

But as a nonprofit subsidized by taxpayers and supported by charitable donations, shouldn’t Vivent’s pay be at a different rate than for-profit corporations?

“I disagree,” Lindner replied. “Non profits are entrusted with accomplishing important and meaningful work. If we want someone to take responsibility of a large organization like that, you have to pay a reasonable salary.”

But the organization she runs is nearly as large, with a $60 million budget, and Lindner earned $364,149 in the 2023-24 year, less than half of what Brandon Hill, her counterpart at Vivent earns. Moreover, Lindner earned just $264,000 as recently as 2020.

Or how about the salary for the high-profile leader of the Greater Milwaukee Foundation, Ellen Gilligan, whose last full year of compensation (in 2023) before retiring was $382,718, slightly more than half of what Hill was paid at Vivent, though both groups had similar-sized budgets.

And even at half of Hill’s salary, Lindner’s salary hike of nearly 38% in four years — while inflation rose by just 17.5% and United Way’s budget was flat — raises questions. The group’s communications director Dan Herda defended the pay hike, noting that that United Way’s board reviewed “third-party studies of the compensation of comparable national and local nonprofits.”

There is no doubt nonprofit CEO pay has risen, with egregious examples of leaders making well more than $1 million, many of them in the medical field, as is Vivent. Yet the average CEO pay for health and medical care groups was less than $200,000.

The rise in corporate CEO pay is a major factor in the ever-growing wealth gap in America. As Urban Milwaukee has reported, the average pay for the CEO of an S&P 500 was 285 times more than the average worker earned in 2024. In Wisconsin two of the top CEOs earned 1,000 times or more than the average worker.

That trend is clearly influencing the nonprofit sector. Typically nonprofits “don’t have that much oversight and the money can go right to the top,” said Evan McKenzie an organizer with Local 39 of the OPEIU, the Office and Professional Employees International Union, in a story by Urban Milwaukee. “We’re seeing wide gaps between the executive and the workers pay.”

The whole theory behind United Way is that the consolidation of fundraising will assure that donors get the most bang for their buck and that its oversight will assure that donors see a “major impact from their donations,” as the group has promised metro Milwaukee donors.

The heart of United Way campaigns has always been workplace giving, and the average worker in the four-county metro area earns $31.18 per hour or $62,630 per year. How would they feel about donating to a group like Vivent, whose CEO earns nearly 12 times more than this? Or that United Way’s leader thinks the leaders of charity-funded groups should earn as much as for-profit companies?

Those are questions that United Way’s board of directors might want to consider as they strive to overcome years of flat or declining funding for the organization.