How Much Salary do Charity Executives Earn?

Behind the scenes, the work of a charity CEO is never easy. In addition to overseeing fundraising, programming and ensuring the brand is respected, is the need to maintain that all is done above board. This is especially true when it comes to salaries of a charity's top executives.

After all, why should someone choose to donate their hard-earned money when a charity's CEO takes home a salary in the six or seven figures?

Most organizations argue that high salaries are warranted because of "the complexity of the role [which] compels them to offer salaries that attract the kind of CEO candidates that their organizations and missions demand," wrote The Guardian last year.

"Many donors assume that charity leaders work for free or minimal pay and are shocked to see that they earn six figure salaries," A study by Charity Navigator, which provides well-respected evaluations of nonprofits, said. "But well-meaning donors sometimes fail to consider that these CEOs are typically running multi-million dollar operations that endeavor to help change the world."

For the most part, CEO salaries are reasonable and it’s the few exceptions that make headlines, Charity Navigator reports.

“While reports of excessive nonprofit salaries frequently make the front page, our data tells a very different story,” said Charity Navigator president & CEO, Michael Thatcher. “Analysis into the compensation practices at over 4,500 charities reveals that the vast majority of CEOs receive very reasonable salaries.”

To make matters more complicated, just playing the numbers game and comparing salaries doesn't tell a full story.

"Looking at a national average for CEO pay is virtually worthless," Excellence in Giving, a philanthropic advisory firm, wrote. "Organization size, location, and sector all greatly affect CEO compensation. For example, the highest nonprofit CEO salaries are found in Healthcare, and secondarily Education. Those numbers get skewed by large nonprofit hospital systems and big universities."

However, the optics of high compensation - especially for charities that help the needy - can contribute to negative publicity. It's a complex problem that has undergone much scrutiny in recent years. Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (The Fellowship), is not exempt.

While Rabbi Eckstein's salary may seem high in the non-profit sector, his compensation is commensurate with what he brings to the table.

“This is a man who came up with the simple but brilliant idea that he could bring $100 million a year to Israel for good works,” adds Limor Bar-On, a communications adviser who has worked for Eckstein told Haaretz. “This is a person with a huge passion and great love for the people of Israel. In my opinion, he is entitled to every dollar he gets.”

The numbers speak for themselves. The Fellowship, which is the largest non-profit in Israel, donates approximately $130 million a year to new olim and the poor and hungry in Israel. As of 2016, Eckstein reportedly earns $900,000 - not even 1% of donations.

Additionally, when compared to the salaries of other top executives in the Jewish world, Eckstein's salary is not unusual.

For example, on the lower end is Jewish National Fund Russell F. Robinson who reportedly makes $350,000, followed by Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt who earns $670,000 and Jewish Federations of North America's CEO Jerry Silverman who takes home $636,000, according to the Forward's salary survey.

If one looks beyond the Jewish world, to the top earners in the United States, those numbers pale in comparison. According to Charity Watch, which obtained the IRS form 990, the CEO of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Craig B. Thompson makes some $6.7 million, the American Heart Association's Nancy Brown earns $1.8 and National Rifle Association Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre earns $1.42 million.

Ultimately, though, Charity Navigator cautions that a CEO’s compensation is just one part of a intricate puzzle and should not determine whether or not the non-profit is using its funds appropriately.

The National Council of Nonprofits suggests a charity's board of directors identify compensation that is “reasonable and not excessive," but that also is attractive enough to retain the best possible talent to lead the organization. The recommended process for determining the appropriate compensation is to conduct a review of what similarly-sized peer organizations, in the same geographic location, offer their senior leaders, it said in a process that the IRS refers to as “rebuttable presumption.”