PhillyInc

Last week, we conducted an unscientific survey of people visiting this site and asked this question: "Who is the most admired and effective CEO or top exec in Philly region?" People could vote for more than one person, or write in a name. The software from Poll Daddy.com prevented (using cookies) people from voting more than once if they voted from a single computer, but it did not prevent people from voting more often using different computers each time, if they were so ambitious. At least one write-in nominee got multiple votes apparently using several different computers around an office (tsk, tsk, Kevin).

Anyway, we recorded nearly 400 votes. Here's the result:

Sister Mary Scullion, 53, co-founder of Project H.O.M.E., a nationally recognized nonprofit aid organization, received the most votes. This initially surprised us, but it should not have. Scullion and her co-founder, Joan McConnon, 48, have created from scratch a $12 million independent nonprofit aid agency, employing 250 people, to provide local services and develop affordable residential housing through nine for-profit and nonprofit subsidiaries. It's also now constructing a four-story technology center in North-Central Philadelphia. In a Q&A, Scullion offers insights on nonprofit management and her style.

Others in the top rank were:

Amy Gutmann, president since 2004 of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the region's biggest and most prestigious employers.

Jack Bogle, 77, founder and former CEO of Vanguard Group, the nationally acclaimed wealth management and investment firm.

Brian L. Roberts, CEO and president of Comcast Corp., one of Philadelphia's most successful and highest-profile employers.

Paul R. Levy, founder and executive director of the Center City District, one of the nation's most successful community development agencies.

Coincidentally last week, the consulting firm DeMarche Associates Inc. released its own methodical analysis of CEOs ranked on the basis of companies' earnings performances. Four Philadelphia-area executives made the list of 163 people nationwide. Interestingly, our readers only mentioned one of the four, Alfred P. West Jr., of SEIC Investments. (The others were Nicholas Debenedictis of Aqua America, William Carey of Central European Dist. Corp., and James Maguire Jr. of Philadelphia Consolidated Holding Corp.) The DeMarche ranking only looked at CEOs of publicly traded companies. Three of the top five in our survey run private nonprofit entities.

See PhillyInc's entire survey list here. (jpeg 150k)

Click on the link below or here for the Scullion Q&A.

We're a little late to this, but we see that Charity Navigator, a nonprofit monitor of nonprofit charities nationwide, released its fifth annual study of metro regions on May 30 and found that charities in the Philadelphia metro region are flourishing but spend a bigger share of their budgets (11.4 percent) on administrative expenses than nonprofits in any other in the 30 biggest metro regions. Says the study: "Charities in Philadelphia have the highest administrative expenses. This is due to the high cost of living in that area and to the fact that Philadelphia has one of the highest concentrations of arts groups, which tend to encounter significantly above-average administration fees." Detail on the region's ranking is here and the 78 charities it examined are listed here. The Philadelphia Business Journal takes the angle this week (Sub. required) that Philadelphia charities "stack up much better compared with their counterparts in other regions than they did a year ago." Granted, this region climbed into the No. 7 spot in overall rankings from No. 27 a year before. But even Charity Navigator is impressed mostly by the admin expenses, higher even relative to revenue even than in NYC or San Francisco.

Overall the study found:

Market Size: New York City (562 large charities), D.C. (487) and L.A. (182) are more crowded and competitive philanthropic markets than Miami (32), Cincinnati (31) and Charlotte (29).

Fundraising Efficiency: Orlando's and Milwaukee's charities are the most efficient in their fundraising endeavors. Cincinnati's and Baltimore's charities are the least.

Program Expenses: Cleveland's charities spend the largest portion of their budgets on their programs, with Milwaukee's and Houston's charities also ranking highly in this area. Charities spending the least on their programs are found in Miami , followed by those in Seattle and Baltimore.

Annual Growth: Charities in Phoenix and Colorado Springs are among the fastest growing, while charities in Detroit and Kansas City are among the slowest.

Wealth: Pittsburgh's largest charities are generally richer in assets and working capital than charities in other parts of the country, while charities in Orlando are less financially secure.

Donor Privacy Policy: Milwaukee (67%) and Cincinnati (61%) have higher percentages of charities with written donor privacy plans; Pittsburgh (29%) and Boston (30%) have the lowest percentage of such charities.

- Thomas Ginsberg

The family foundation of Aramark Corp. CEO and chairman Joseph Neubauer, wife Jeanette, son Lawrence and daughter Melissa Anderson has pledged $25 million to their alma mater, the University of Chicago, to establish "an innovative program to attract some of the nation's most outstanding young faculty." Faculty hired with the money will be called "Neubauer Family Assistant Professors."

The Neubauers, who have a home in Rittenhouse Square, in Philadelphia, have been active and robust donors to the university and what it calls its "Chicago Initiative," a fund-raising campaign. The school said the Neubauer Family Foundation now has given $36 million to the school, including making its largest commitment for faculty endowment. Neubauer personally was ranked 15th among 60 biggest donors in the country last year by Slate.com for giving away $114.6 million - granted, some of it went to his own foundation, but who's counting. He and his family have been major donors around Philadelphia, too. They have committed $10 million to the Philadelphia Orchestra and even chipped in $3 million last year to keep Wal-Mart's family from snatching the Thomas Eakins painting "The Gross Clinic." Remember all that next time you order a cafeteria sandwich.

- Thomas Ginsberg

The tally is in, and in the end, the King Tut exhibit at Philadelphia's Franklin Institute fell short of breaking the record for North American museum attendance, even after weeks of buildup publicity by the Franklin Institute. So says the museum in a statement this week, also reported by AP.

No matter. No. 2 may be just as good. (Just ask Avis). The museum's "Tutankhamun and the Golden Age of the Pharaohs" closed Monday with 1.29 million visitors, second only to a 1979 exhibit (also King Tut) at Chicago's Field Museum. That beats King Tut's other current stops and is the most in Pennsylvania history. But let's call this whole record-setting thing off. The show looks like a big hit anyway in revenue, reputation and educational heft for the "Frankitute" (as our pre-schooler calls the Franklin Institute). Marketing V.P. Karen Corbin says the numbers are still being crunched and only dangles this to PhillyInc: "Our expectation was we would not lose money, and we have not." We're betting that will be Philadelphia's understatement of the year.

- Thomas Ginsberg