Adventist Charity Arm Disputes Accusations Of Lavish Salaries
Seven-figure salaries. First-class flights. Illegal immigration.
For the Adventist Development and Relief Agency, these accusations add to the strain of an already challenging year. Slammed by USAID funding losses that have forced staff and program cuts, the humanitarian arm of the Seventh-day Adventist Church hopes to stop these “rumors” from driving donors away.
In February, a Washington Examiner article named ADRA among USAID recipients whose executives were “living good on the taxpayer dime.”
“These taxpayer-funded private nonprofit organizations often opt to pay their executives high six-figure and occasionally even seven-figure salaries while also providing them with swanky benefits, tax records show,” the article said. “On top of their generous salaries, Mercy Corps and Adventist Development and Relief Agency International paid for first-class travel for their high-level employees.”
In April, Adventist Today warned of “unfounded rumors” spreading on social media and in “unreliable” publications that ADRA’s president earned a salary in the millions and its board members’ salaries had doubled. The article also dismissed as misinformation a claim that the ministry has provided material support for illegal immigration.
ADRA itself has dismissed the financial accusations as a mix of rumor and misunderstanding of the ministry’s Form 990 tax return.
ADRA’s 2023 filing lists seven board members as having received six-figure compensation — the highest being $178,136. Typically, nonprofit board members serve as unpaid volunteers. However, Jennifer Stymiest, ADRA’s director of digital marketing and development, told MinistryWatch the 990 numbers are not what they appear.
“ADRA does not pay its Board Members,” Stymiest said in a written communication. “Any compensation to Board Members listed on ADRA’s 990 Form reflects payment from a related organization, such as the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists; not from ADRA itself.”
Stymiest also pushed back against criticisms that ADRA pays executives too much.
“ADRA has lower salaries than most NGOs,” she said. “Very few members of ADRA’s staff receive compensation that reaches six figures, and in those select cases, these team members generally are highly trained medical or other professionals, all of whom would command much higher salaries in the private sector.”
According to the ministry’s 990, the highest compensated executive in 2023 was the director of health, nutrition and WASH, who received $252,511. The president received a more modest $180,148, which includes his base salary as well as benefits.
Speaking to Adventist publication Spectrum Magazine, ADRA also addressed concerns about travel expenses.
“ADRA’s president and employees do not travel first-class as suggested. ADRA’s policy prohibits paying for first-class flights, though, in certain circumstances, an employee may be upgraded at the airline’s discretion.”
The immigration claim, however, is more complicated.
In January 2024, a Center for Immigration Studies report listed ADRA as one among many nongovernmental organizations that were allegedly paid through USAID during the Biden administration to facilitate the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States. The report claimed ADRA intended “to distribute more than $10 million, nearly 38 percent of it as cash and cash vouchers and the rest as food, shelter, and hygiene needs in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, and Peru.”
The report’s author, Todd Bensman, again called out the Seventh-day Adventist Church by name during a Fox News interview with Laura Ingraham, noting that “all the major religious groups are represented” in the scheme to fund illegal immigration. Bensman currently serves as senior advisor to Trump Administration “Border Czar” Tom Homan.
Fulcrum7, a conservative Adventist resource critical of ADRA’s alleged leftist political alignments, honed in on the immigration scandal.
“Parents who send their children to work with ADRA are usually unaware of what is going on behind the scenes,” warned a January article. “We have been warning about social justice for 9 years, and this is one of the reasons. It causes the church to support—through the United Nations—social justice causes like feminism, abortion … and now illegal immigration.”
Without directly disputing that such aid distributions occurred, former ADRA President Michael Kruger challenged the Center for Immigration Studies’ characterization of the ministry’s immigrant outreaches.
“This accusation that ADRA works basically as a ‘coyote’ in the southern border of the United States is patently false. It’s not the way that we work; it’s not what we do,” Kruger said during an ADRA presentation at the Spring Meeting of the General Conference Executive Committee in April.
While Kruger acknowledged the ministry “does work with migrants and people on the move,” he noted that its largest migrant intervention was in Ukraine helping people displaced by the war.
Recently, Kruger stepped down from his executive post to serve as CFO at Adventist HealthCare.
Meanwhile, the shutdown of USAID has significantly impacted ADRA’s revenue. In 2023, ADRA received $62.6 million in USAID grants — about 67% of total contributions of $94 million. The sudden loss of such a major donor has weakened the ministry’s international programs and forced deep staffing cuts. A March press release indicated an 18% reduction in its U.S. staff in addition to layoffs in other countries, with the expectation of more cuts to follow. The report noted that affected programs include disaster relief, water, health, nutrition and initiatives to increase the self-sufficiency of the poor.
The organization currently holds a MinistryWatch donor confidence score of 60 and a C transparency grade.
This piece is republished from MinistryWatch.
Tony Mator is a Pittsburgh journalist, copywriter, blogger and musician who has done work for World magazine, The Imaginative Conservative and the Hendersonville Times-News, among others. Follow his work and observations at twitter.com/wise_watcher.