Brian O'Meara: Wow. "four out of 16 curators lost their jobs. Three other staff members in the division took voluntary buyouts, including the manager of the fish collection—one of the largest in the world.... One of the laid off curators had an endowed position"

Wow. "four out of 16 curators lost their jobs. Three other staff members in the division took voluntary buyouts, including the manager of the fish collection—one of the largest in the world.... One of the laid off curators had an endowed position"

California Academy of Sciences reeling from budget cuts

California Academy of Sciences reeling from budget cutswww.science.org A major natural history collection loses one-quarter of its curators

How... how do you lay off someone with an endowed position?

"The CAS spokesperson says they intend to refill the position after the endowment has regrown enough to cover salary costs." Typically (not sure about Cal Acad) earnings from endowment pay. So their endowment has shrunk recently??

I was under the impression that the endowment for a chair was supposed to be managed in such a way that it was *always* paying salary costs from the interest and that the principal was preserved. Sounds like this one got underfunded, the salary grew beyond earnings, or something else.

That's my guess, too. I don't think their 990 forms will have enough detail to see when they're released, but maybe the funder will get info.

990's definitely don't get in to that level of detail for almost any org. The donor can get info, but many endowed positions are from estates or are old enough that the org that no longer exists, etc. Then it's whatever the org thinks is "honoring the donor's intent".

serious potential for immediate bad consequences to the live collections

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