Giving ‘til it hurts: Charity Execs' Pay Averages $327,575 in 2005

God bless the child that's got his own. The typical CEO of a large U.S. charity or foundation earned $327,575 last year, a 3.6 percent increase over 2004, according to an annual survey by the Chronicle of Philanthropy.

While nonprofit compensation has grown faster than inflation in recent years, salaries ``are not going up anywhere near what they are in the private sector,'' said Trent Stamp, executive director of Charity Navigator, a Mahwah, New Jersey-based group that evaluates the performance of nonprofit organizations. ``And for the most part when you see a salary, that's it. There's no perks, no stock, no house that comes with it, no car.''

Rising executive pay is a positive trend at a time when charities and the foundations that support them are under scrutiny by Congress and some state attorneys general, Stamp said.

A public opinion survey in July 2006 by New York University's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service found that Americans ``continue to have serious reservations about the performance of charitable organizations,'' a sentiment that took hold during the disputes over how relief funds were distributed after the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

Subsequent controversies involving the Red Cross, the Nature Conservancy and other large nonprofits fueled the public's mistrust, the NYU study said. Stamp said that, given those challenges, nonprofits need to raise salaries in order to attract and retain qualified executives.

Huh? Run that argument by us again…..

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