logo
    • Magazine
    • Membership
    • Donate
  • Racial Justice
  • Economic Justice
    • Collections
  • Climate Justice
  • Health Justice
  • Leadership
  • CONTENT TYPES
  • Subscribe
  • Webinars
    • Upcoming Webinars
    • Complimentary Webinars
    • Premium On-Demand Webinars
  • Membership
  • Submissions

One More Step in Goodwill Omaha’s Long Post-Scandal Journey Home

Ruth McCambridge
October 4, 2017
Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
From the Goodwill Omaha website

October 3, 2017; Omaha World-Herald

Almost a year after its last CEO departed in the wake of a scandal that left its local reputation in tatters, Goodwill Omaha has finally hired a permanent replacement. The interim, in concert with the board, has done what good interims ought to do in such circumstances, cleaning house and taking names when needed, but now, as Goodwill hires a permanent, the choice itself suggests there is more turnaround work to do.

Sign up for our free newsletters

Subscribe to NPQ's newsletters to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

Michael McGinnis, the retired Army Brigadier General who is the nonprofit’s choice for a permanent executive, was in the military for 29 years and has been chief executive of the Strategic Air Command and Aerospace Museum for four years, where it sounds like he acted as a turnaround exec. At Goodwill Omaha, he will make around half what his predecessor took home. That pay cut may be necessary as a signal to the community, since executive pay was out of whack at the agency—14 executives and managers at the charity, now mostly departed from the ranks, were paid $100,000 or more when the scandal broke. It’s also beside the point, since there were other, deeper ethical issues in need of airing, like the paying of a subminimum wage to the nonprofit’s workers with disabilities (not against the law but ethically shaky when you are overpaying executives), nepotism and conflicts of interest at the board and staff levels, and some baldly questionable business practices.

This article doesn’t say whether Goodwill Omaha has recovered the trust it lost with its local donor community, which was having a financial impact. However, the agency appears to still be undergoing an ethics review, and an investigation by Nebraska’s attorney general’s office is evidently ongoing. Meanwhile, the former CEO has sued the agency for another $550,000 he says he is owed under a severance agreement. So, suffice it to say that the agency is not yet through this storm of its own making, and it will likely remain in a state of atonement for the perceivable future.—Ruth McCambridge

Share
Tweet
Share
Email
Print
About the author
Ruth McCambridge

Ruth is Editor Emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly. Her background includes forty-five years of experience in nonprofits, primarily in organizations that mix grassroots community work with policy change. Beginning in the mid-1980s, Ruth spent a decade at the Boston Foundation, developing and implementing capacity building programs and advocating for grantmaking attention to constituent involvement.

More about: Board Governanceexecutive compensationExecutive TransitionManagement and LeadershipNonprofit News

Become a member

Support independent journalism and knowledge creation for civil society. Become a member of Nonprofit Quarterly.

Members receive unlimited access to our archived and upcoming digital content. NPQ is the leading journal in the nonprofit sector written by social change experts. Gain access to our exclusive library of online courses led by thought leaders and educators providing contextualized information to help nonprofit practitioners make sense of changing conditions and improve infra-structure in their organizations.

Join Today
logo logo logo logo logo
See comments

Spring-2023-sidebar-subscribe
You might also like
Hierarchy and Justice
Cyndi Suarez
Salvadoran Foreign Agent Law Threatens Human Rights Movements
Devon Kearney
Charitable Tax Reform: Why Half Measures Won’t Curb Plutocracy
Alan Davis
Healing-Centered Leadership: A Path to Transformation
Shawn A. Ginwright
Into the Fire: Lessons from Movement Conflicts
Ingrid Benedict, Weyam Ghadbian and Jovida Ross
How Nonprofits Can Truly Advance Change
Hildy Gottlieb

NPQ Webinars

April 27th, 2 pm ET

Liberatory Decision-Making

How to Facilitate and Engage in Healthy Decision-making Processes

Register Now
You might also like
Hierarchy and Justice
Cyndi Suarez
Salvadoran Foreign Agent Law Threatens Human Rights...
Devon Kearney
Charitable Tax Reform: Why Half Measures Won’t Curb...
Alan Davis

Like what you see?

Subscribe to the NPQ newsletter to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

See our newsletters

By signing up, you agree to our privacy policy and terms of use, and to receive messages from NPQ and our partners.

NPQ-Spring-2023-cover

Independent & in your mailbox.

Subscribe today and get a full year of NPQ for just $59.

subscribe
  • About
  • Contact
  • Advertise
  • Copyright
  • Careers

We are using cookies to give you the best experience on our website.

 

Non Profit News | Nonprofit Quarterly
Powered by  GDPR Cookie Compliance
Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.

Strictly Necessary Cookies

Strictly Necessary Cookie should be enabled at all times so that we can save your preferences for cookie settings.

If you disable this cookie, we will not be able to save your preferences. This means that every time you visit this website you will need to enable or disable cookies again.