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Nonprofit is lucrative for founder

When he launched the first National Night Out in 1984, Matt A. Peskin envisioned an event in which people across America would turn on their lights and sit on their porches in a symbolic gesture to fight crime.

... Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania governor, $164,000 ...
... Ed Rendell, Pennsylvania governor, $164,000 ...Read more

When he launched the first National Night Out in 1984, Matt A. Peskin envisioned an event in which people across America would turn on their lights and sit on their porches in a symbolic gesture to fight crime.

The Wynnewood man's idea quickly evolved into a night of coordinated neighborhood block parties. Peskin says about 11,000 communities will celebrate National Night Out on Aug. 7. Millions of Americans will participate.

Little did Peskin imagine that his concept would grow and endure, thanks partly to federal subsidies of $2.7 million in the last 10 years.

And nobody imagined the event would reward Peskin so richly.

His organization, the National Association of Town Watch, devoted about a third of its budget in 2005 to pay Peskin a $255,000 salary and $42,000 in benefits, according to the group's most recent tax filings.

According to the NonProfit Times, a business publication covering nonprofit management, the average salary for a charity with less than $1 million in annual revenue - the size of Peskin's organization - is about $70,000. Peskin's pay is in line with that of chief executives of large nonprofits with annual revenue greater than $50 million, according to the trade journal.

Peskin is paid more than any federal official other than the president, who makes $400,000. He is paid more than the governor of any state - Gov. Rendell makes about $164,000 this year. Law enforcement officials don't make what he makes. The Philadelphia police commissioner makes $143,000, and the Pennsylvania State Police commissioner is paid $125,000. They manage departments with thousands of employees.

Personable and earnest, Peskin oversees a staff of one full-time employee and some seasonal part-time workers out of offices on East Wynnewood Road.

"I can't go by what somebody else makes," said Peskin, 53, who got his start as the unpaid editor of the Lower Merion Town Watch newsletter. "I just go by what I think I deserve and the amount of time I put in. I think I do a good job. I'm the one who put all this together, put the concept together, sold it at the beginning."

The National Association of Town Watch is governed by a five-man board of directors that includes Peskin and his brother, Hal, whom the organization pays $28,000 a year for part-time assistance. The other board members are Peskin family friends with connections to Lower Merion.

"I'm not a big fan of gigantic boards," Peskin said.

The board chairman, Herbert M. Gross, 79, a Bala Cynwyd developer now retired to Florida, said Peskin did the work of two people and was "more than worth" his salary.

"It's unbelievable what he's done," said Marc Kooperman, a painting contractor and longtime board member. "He had a vision, and it worked."

One reason the association can afford to pay Peskin so handsomely is that American taxpayers subsidize about a third of his organization's $900,000 budget. The Justice Department last year gave Peskin's association a $296,000 crime-prevention grant.

While the grants for National Night Out are a fraction of the Bureau of Justice Assistance's annual $1.5 billion budget, the money continues to flow even as violent crime is increasing and local law enforcement officials complain about reductions in federal assistance.

Some studies indicate that neighborhood-watch programs are not effective at reducing crime because they do not fundamentally change the behavior of criminals.

Town watch has "no effect on violent crime," said Lawrence W. Sherman, director of the Jerry Lee Center of Criminology at the University of Pennsylvania. "And events like National Night Out - one night of marching and protesting - there's zero evidence that works."

But there is zero evidence that political leaders or law enforcement officials are inclined to reduce support for neighborhood-watch groups.

"They sound good and feel good," Sherman said. "You organize a lot of people, and that's good, politically."

Peskin is confident of continued federal funding - the association spends $77,500 each year on a Washington communications firm, APCO Worldwide Inc., whose primary function, he said, is to secure the annual grant.

"Nobody will ever complain about our $300,000 in federal money for a program like this," he said. "They get the biggest bang for their buck for this program than any other grant they give. Three hundred thousand dollars for them? . . . Congress, and state reps, they love this thing."

The leaders of several prominent town-watch organizations say the academic studies that downplay the effectiveness of neighborhood watch groups undervalue the importance of improving community relations with police.

"Neighborhood block clubs are making their blocks a better place to live," said John Bauman, who manages community crime-prevention programs for the Minneapolis Police Department, whose Night Out programs last year drew 40,000 people. "Sometimes the studies miss that kind of qualitative stuff."

Bauman and Judi Wright, who manages crime-watch programs for the Boston Police Department, said the annual event was important in boosting interest in neighborhood-watch programs. They praised Peskin's coordination of the event.

"Having it be a national event bolsters people," said Wright, who said 15,000 Bostonians are expected to participate this year in a series of events over several days.

As his salary has increased each year - up from $154,000 ten years ago - so have Peskin's estimates of the participation in National Night Out. He said more than 35 million were expected to take part this year, or about one in every 10 Americans. He acknowledged the number was "probably on the high side," because it was based on reports from local organizers.

About 150,000 Philadelphians would have to take part to keep pace with the national average. But only about 100 neighborhood events are scheduled, involving "several thousand" people, said Anthony Murphy, who heads town-watch programs in the city's Managing Director's Office.

The largest source of funding for National Night Out is the sale of merchandise to local organizations holding events; the association generated a gross profit of $409,000 in 2005 on sales of items such as T-shirts, banners and balloons. Target, the department-store chain, also pays to sponsor the event.

The National Association of Town Watch raised about $25,000 from membership fees, but there is no charge for registering or holding a National Night Out event, Peskin said.

Peskin, who graduated from Pennsylvania State University with a communications degree and has no formal law enforcement training, said he was proud of his record.

"If I didn't think it worked, if I didn't think I was having a positive impact, that I was running the program poorly, I would get out of it, go do something else," said Peskin, the father of two. "But this is kind of like my third kid, and it will be bigger and it will be better."

Peskin's group owns the rights to the "National Night Out" name, and the organization is essentially a one-man operation, but Peskin has ambitious public aims for the annual event. "My goal is to make this the first legal holiday in August," he said.

What They Make Annually

Matt A. Peskin

National Assoc. of Town Watch

$255,000

Ed Rendell

Pennsylvania governor

$164,000

Sylvester Johnson

Phila. police commissioner

$143,000