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(The Center Square)—Despite posting multi-million-dollar losses in several recent years, a federally funded nonprofit that develops vaccines against deadly viruses overseas has continued to raise its executives’ pay. That includes two whose compensation exceeded the $400,000 annual salary of the president of the United States, an investigation by The Center Square found.

The Albert B. Sabin Vaccine Institute of Washington, D.C., a 501(c)(3) organization, reported a net loss of nearly $4 million in 2024 and $2 million the year before, according to federal records.Its revenue dropped 10.5% to $35.9 million from $40.1 million in 2023, while its federal grants and contracts from the Department of Health and Human Services declined to $30.6 million from $31.3 million over the same period.

Despite the decreases, Sabin increased its spending on executive compensation and other salaries and wages by $800,000, to $9 million, in 2024.Topping the list was CEO Amy Finan, who saw her compensation from the nonprofit rise to $517,124 from $503,726 in 2023. Then-President Anuradha Gupta received the biggest raise. Her compensation soared to $418,131 in 2024 from $237,447 the previous year. Finan and Gupta were among six executives who received more than $300,000 in compensation from the nonprofit in 2024. A seventh, Denise Garrett, a vice president, received $298,500.

Ross Marchand, executive director of the Taxpayers Protection Alliance, said an audit could determine whether private sources could subsidize the nonprofit rather than government grants.

“The Institute does really important work,” Marchand told The Center Square, “but it’s hard to say if taxpayers should be footing the bill for executives’ compensation. A good audit would show if private sources rather than government grants could subsidize the Institute.”

Spokespersons for Sabin did not return two emails and voicemails from The Center Square seeking comment. Founded in 1993, the nonprofit develops and tests vaccines against the Marburg virus and Sudan Ebola virus with both government and private funding. Both diseases are highly lethal and have caused outbreaks in East and Central Africa. Its founder was a twentieth-century Polish American medical researcher who developed the oral vaccine against polio.

Sabin is developing a vaccine for Sudan virus, a strain of Ebola distinct from the Bundibugyo virus responsible for a current outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that health workers in the Congo have gone unpaid and are so upset that they have “violated basic Ebola control protocols and allowed grieving families to touch the bodies of relatives killed by the virus—an act almost certain to spread the disease, not stem it.” The outbreak has killed about 3,200 people there and is likely to exceed prior Ebola epidemics in Africa, the story reported.Some Sabin executives have seen their compensation stay roughly the same or even decline. Former CEO Michael Marine received $284,539 in 2015, roughly $1,000 less than he made the year before. Current CEO Finan’s compensation remained essentially flat from 2020 to 2021 when she made $410,000 each year and fell $15,000 a year from 2017 to 2018.

In most years, Sabin’s executives have received pay boosts regardless of the nonprofit’s finances.

Finan became CEO in 2016, when her compensation was $230,556 and Sabin reported $14.8 million in revenue. In 2017, her compensation rose to $377,725 even as the nonprofit’s revenue fell to $8.1 million.

Meanwhile, Sabin’s spending on executive compensation and other salaries and wages has nearly tripled since 2018, rising from $3.3 million to $9 million in 2024.

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