A nonprofit called the 1736 Family Crisis Center offers shelter and support for victims of domestic violence in Los Angeles and Orange County. The group has been around for decades and has an annual budget of around $15 million. But according to a new report, the group's CEO has spent at least the past decade living in Hawaii.
The primary residence of the nonprofit’s chief executive has been in Hawaii for at least the last 10 years. And for at least part of that time, the organization has paid for a luxury beachside apartment in Santa Monica for her visits to the region, and leased a BMW for her personal use at home on the Big Island, according to nonprofit records reviewed by The Times and a lawyer who fielded employee concerns in 2019.
It’s unclear how long the 1736 FCC paid for the $6,500-a-month apartment or if it continues to do so. Board members for the nonprofit, which runs domestic violence shelters in the L.A. area, approved the arrangement in 2018, according to emails.
In addition to the free car back home in Hawaii and the apartment in Santa Monica, CEO Carol Adelkoff also gets a very generous annual salary.
In the nonprofit’s 2024 tax form, the latest to be made public, Carol Adelkoff, the chief executive officer of 1736 Family Crisis Center, earned $742,181.
Adelkoff earned even more the year before. According to forms filed with the IRS, in 2023 she pocketed $907,923, a payout that included a $495,000 bonus, a number that exceeded her base pay at the time.
The next highest-paid employee that year, the nonprofit’s finance director, made $206,000.
When asked about her pay, Adelkoff said the unusually high compensation was the result of a payout of unused vacation time that had accrued over the 40 years she has worked at the nonprofit. She said the kind of work ethic needed to grow an organization such as hers meant it was challenging to take time off...
Experts say the vast majority of nonprofits cap the amount of vacation time an employee can accrue, most often to one-and-a-half times the vacation hours allotted to them for a single year.
Other employees had their vacation time capped, but Adelkoff did not. Plus, it helped that she was earning eight weeks of vacation per year for many years. That was eventually cut to four weeks in 2012.
Even putting aside the massive payout for vacation time, Adelkoff appears to make a lot more than CEOs for similarly sized organizations.
Her compensation as stated in the latest available tax filings outstrips the pay for leaders of much larger nonprofits in the homelessness arena. For instance, in 2024, the Weingart Center Assn. paid its CEO $481,271 in base pay and bonuses, according to the organization’s latest tax filing. The nonprofit last reported an annual revenue of roughly $89 million.
In 2023, the CEO of People Assisting the Homeless and its affiliates — one of L.A.’s largest providers of homelessness services, with annual revenue of $175 million — earned roughly $379,000...
The Times compared Adelkoff’s most recent compensation to leaders of 16 other nonprofits in L.A. County that aid people escaping domestic violence and provide other homelessness services. Of them, the next highest earner was the CEO of the Jewish Family Service LA, who earned $423,932 in 2024, when the organization’s revenue topped $70 million, less than a third of which came from government contracts.
The median annual compensation of the 16 executive leaders was $159,737, which included base salary, bonuses and other compensation.
By contrast, more than 90 percent of 1736's funds come from government contracts. The spending was so conspicuous that a group of employees hired an attorney and called it a misuse of funds.
In 2019, three senior employees of the 1736 FCC hired attorney Dorsey Kleger-Heine, saying they were alarmed by the use of nonprofit funds on various benefits for its CEO, who has resided in Hawaii, where the organization has no shelters or clients, for at least a decade. They alleged this spending constituted a misuse of funds...
Six months after the board heard their concerns, the three employees sued the organization for retaliation and wrongful termination.
It's quite a good gig, if you can get it. One thing that I didn't see in either story is how much time Adelkoff actually spends in Los Angeles. She has the swanky apartment with security for her visits here but how often does she actually visit? That would be interesting to know.
🚨TRENDING: The CEO of a Los Angeles homelessness non-profit made more than $1.6 million over two years while living in Hawaii, according to the Los Angeles Times. Carol Adelkoff of the 1736 Family Crisis Center collected the money in the form of salary, bonuses and vacation payouts, the LA Times reports. Her organization is primarily supported by government grants, IRS filings show.
— Off The Press (@OffThePress1) August 6, 2026
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