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How Much Does Roger Goodell Make?

Nonprofit organizations in the US are required to disclose the salaries of their top executives on a form filed annually with the Internal Revenue Service known as the Form 990. The Form 990 is an informational return that applies to both qualified charities recognized under IRS section 501(c)(3), which are the organizations you commonly think of as charities, and trade associations and other nonprofits to which section 501(c)(6) applies, which are member organizations not operated as charities. Under old guidelines, a 501(c)(3) organization was required to list on its Form 990 its five most highly compensated employees who earned more than $50,000.

The IRS has issued a new Form 990 (here and here) which will substantially expand the scope of salary information required to be disclosed by trade associations and other 501(c)(6) organizations. These trade associations and member organizations, like the NFL, will now be required to report salaries for key executives who earn more $150,000 a year and are responsible for more than 10% of an organization's activties. The thresholds applies equally to charities and trade associations; what has caused the NFL and the others to be so concerned is that this reporting obligation has not been applied to them before now.. Consequently, the NFL has joined with the national trade association of nonprofit executives to start a lobbying effort to convince the IRS and/or Congress to rescind the regulations and exempt 501(c)(6) associations from reporting salary information on Form 990.

While, from a curiosity standpoint, I'm interested in what Goodell makes, there is no particular public policy reason why I or any other person who is not an executive of one of the member clubs of the NFL has a good reason to know his salary. Unlike charities which actively seek out donations from the public and therefore should disclose to the public who benefits from the money, the NFL and most trade associations, are private businesses for which salary information should remain private. There is, I suppose, one caveat to this position and that is almost every member club of the NFL has significant public investment in the stadium in which it plays and so an argument can be made, that such investment transforms the club, and by extension the league itself, into a public asset for which transparency is necessary. Depending on the lease arrangement between the local government and the club, I could see this argument having merit on the club, but I don't believe it carries much weight when applied to the league.

Just for the record, according to this post by my friend Darren Rovell at CNBC, Goodell is making about $11 million per year.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on August 25, 2008 (boomark / email).