Food Bank of Western Massachusetts has greater financial transparency than Electronic Frontier Foundation

Despite a board of directors and staff that includes educated and affluent Information Age and Open Society revolutionaries, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), a San Francisco-based non-profit organization founded in 1990 whose mission includes fostering and promoting the creation and use of digital tools to allow “the public to more closely examine government and corporate entities, and to hold them accountable for deception, censorship and corruption,” will not be winning any year-in-review awards for financial disclosure and transparency (D&T). After 20 years of cutting-edge activity, here is the embarrassing extent of EFF’s digital commitment to D&T, as posted on its website:

• 2008-2009 Annual Report
• 2007 Annual Report
• 2006 Annual Report

Contrast that with these documents, all posted on the website of the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts, a tax-exempt non-profit organization founded in 1982 “to prevent and alleviate hunger in Berkshire, Franklin, Hampden, and Hampshire Counties in western Massachusetts” and which received much-needed attention in the wake of the recent Cooks Source Magazine copyright scandal:

• 2009 Annual Report
• 2008 Annual Report
• 2007 Annual Report
• 2006 Annual Report

• 2009 Audited Financial Statements
• 2008 Audited Financial Statements
• 2007 Audited Financial Statements

While hundreds of struggling families will seek assistance from the Food Bank of Western Massachusetts this holiday season, at least one person will not have to worry about putting a decent meal on the table: Shari Steele, executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation. You see, the secret financial paperwork that EFF keeps locked in its file cabinet reveals that not only is Steele’s annual compensation approaching $200,000, but she has the option of contributing to EFF’s posh 403(b) deferred income plan, which matches up to 10% of an employee’s contributions. That's a lot of bread.