1736 Family Crisis Center paid CEO Carol Adelkoff more than $1.6 million in salary, vacation pay and other compensation over the last two tax years, a figure that is now drawing fresh scrutiny because the nonprofit says nearly all of its revenue comes from taxpayer-funded grants. Its latest public filing shows Adelkoff received $742,181 in 2024 after taking home $907,923 in 2023.
That is why the 1736 Family Crisis Center CEO pay question is back in focus now: the center says it brings in about $15 million a year, runs 16 facilities in L.A. and Orange counties and employs about 170 people, while the chief executive who oversees it lives in Hawaii. Adelkoff’s 2023 total included a $495,000 bonus, and the next highest-paid employee that year, the finance director, made $206,000.
Adelkoff said the unusually large amounts do not reflect a sudden jump in salary. She said her base pay has stayed around $405,000 in recent years and that the spike came from unused vacation time that built up over the 40 years she has worked at the nonprofit. In her telling, the money was not a windfall but a payout of benefits that had been accumulating on the books for decades.
A letter from the center’s attorney, Kerry Garvis Wright, gives the board’s version of why the liability became so large. Wright said the board worked with legal counsel and financial experts to lower the growing obligation, including by paying out vacation time before Adelkoff retires. She also said the center is adjusting its 2024 tax form to show the vacation payout was $329,243, a figure that helps explain the accounting but does not erase the larger totals already reported for 2023 and 2024.
The friction for the center is simple: experts say most nonprofits cap how much vacation an employee can stockpile, usually at about one-and-a-half times a year’s allotment, yet Wright said the board allowed Adelkoff to accrue eight weeks a year as CEO before reducing it to four weeks in 2012. Wright also said the organization caps accrued vacation for other employees, but not for Adelkoff. That makes the arrangement stand out even before the bonus and the Hawaii residence enter the picture.
Wright said the demands of the job made it hard for Adelkoff to take time off because the organization was growing and required around-the-clock oversight. She said that over the decades, the vacation pay accumulated substantially. The unanswered question is less about whether a payout happened than why the board let one executive’s leave balance grow so far beyond the norm at a nonprofit financed almost entirely by public money. With the 2024 filing being revised, the compensation debate is likely to turn next to the board’s long-standing pay rules and how much they should have disclosed sooner.
