WASHINGTON — Chris Dodd collected $3.4 million in base salary and bonus in his final year at the MPAA, and almost $500,000 in additional compensation, according to newly released documents submitted to the IRS.
Dodd, the MPAA’s former chairman and CEO, who left the organization at the end of 2017, had base compensation of $3,164,703 and $275,000 in bonus and incentives in 2017, in line with previous years. He also had $459,838 in other compensation and about $36,000 in other benefits. At the end of a tenure, organizations typically pay out benefits to departing executives for things like unused vacation time.
Charles Rivkin, Dodd’s successor, collected $712,688 in 2017, but that figure is only for part of the year. He joined the MPAA in September, 2017, serving first as CEO and then taking the title of chairman after Dodd’s departure. His compensation includes $100,000 in bonus and almost $5,000 in non-taxable benefits.
An MPAA spokesman declined to comment on salary compensation.
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Dodd’s compensation put him in the upper rankings of trade association salaries, but not at the top. Thomas Donahue, the president and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, has been at the top or near the top of the list in years past. He collected $5.6 million in compensation in 2016.
Dodd joined the MPAA in 2011.
Trade associations and other non-profits are required to file IRS financial forms that are available to the public on request.
The IRS form showed that the MPAA took total revenue of $76.2 million in 2017, an increase from $57.8 million a year earlier. The large increase in revenue was due to the sale of the MPAA’s headquarters on prime real estate on Eye Street in Washington, the organization said. The trade association is retaining a 20% condominium ownership in the building, and is in temporary space as the office structure is being redeveloped.
After expenses, the MPAA had a $4.4 million surplus in 2017, from a deficit of $8.8 million a year earlier.
The form also discloses the MPAA’s grants and contributions to other organizations. The largest was $1 million to Carnegie Mellon University, which has conducted research on piracy. Other contributions run the political spectrum, including grants and donations to the Democratic and Republican governors associations, Americans for Tax Reform, American Conservative Union, the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Public Policy Studies, Third Way, the American Action Forum, Citizens Against Government Waste, the Congressional Black Caucus Foundation, the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Institute, the Hudson Institute, the Internet Society, the Technology Policy Institute, the National Urban League, Voto Latino, the New Democratic Network, the Free State Foundation, and the Anti-Defamation League.
