At many nonprofits, it’s taboo to pay bonuses to fundraisers. The practice might offend donors and upset other staff members. Yet for the highest-paid fundraisers, incentive pay and other sweeteners often make up a big chunk of the paycheck.
In The Chronicle’s annual survey of fundraiser compensation, we analyzed the latest available Internal Revenue Service salary data (chiefly from 2012, but some from 2013) for 335 nonprofits — groups that each raised at least $35 million and have employees making $150,000 or more. Among fundraisers at these groups, half collected a bonus.
Below you can see the 20 fundraisers from the survey with the biggest compensation packages, including base salary, bonus, payout of deferred compensation, and nontaxable benefits. You can also look at a few top earners by cause.
Trends and Highlights
▩ For some fundraisers, bonuses are a hefty component of each year’s paycheck.
From 2009 to 2013, Memorial Sloan Kettering’s Anne McSweeney and Richard Naum together received $4.3 million in bonus or incentive pay — almost half their combined $8.7 million in compensation over those five years. Albert Checcio, who’s leading the University of Southern California’s $6-billion campaign, has collected incentive pay totaling nearly $200,000 over the past two years.
▩ Incentive pay can top salary — by a lot.
For five years, Mark Kostegan of Mount Sinai Hospital and its Icahn School of Medicine has had a base salary of $500,000. His bonus in 2013: $773,000.
▩ Fundraisers at hospitals and medical centers are often paid as top executives.
At many health-care institutions, chief development officers are part of senior management and get bonuses accordingly. Stuart Sullivan came to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia in 2009 from Temple University, where he got a small bonus — $22,000 — in his last year. But at the hospital, he’s received roughly $300,000 in incentive pay each year from 2010 through 2012 — bonus money tied in part to measures of the organization’s overall health, including financial performance and patient safety.
▩ Deferred compensation can be a weapon against turnover.
Some institutions routinely award their top executives deferred compensation — income set aside and paid out in a later year, often into a retirement-savings account. In some instances, deferred-compensation plans are structured to keep top fundraisers on the job — they don’t collect if they leave the organization before the payout date.
Though deferred compensation is accrued over several years, it’s often paid out in a single year, which can dramatically pump up earnings. In 2012, Daniel Forman, Yeshiva University’s longtime advancement chief, collected more than $1.3 million from a five-year deferred-compensation plan — about 45 percent of his base salary over that time.
▩ Charities outside health care and higher education are dabbling in bonus pay.
Fundraisers getting bonuses or incentive pay (usually along with other executives in their organization) in both 2012 and 2013 included Mindy Miller of the Harlem Children’s Zone (two-year total: $156,258); the Wounded Warrior Project’s Adam Silva ($80,625); Oxfam America’s Stephanie Kurzina ($70,322); Sheila Kelly of the Michael J. Fox Foundation for Parkinson’s Research ($64,500); and the Boy Scouts’ Brad Farmer ($62,953).
In 2012, the Metropolitan Opera’s Coralie Toevs received a $50,000 bonus — a rare instance of a fundraiser getting a bonus while other organization executives did not.
▩ Pay does not typically reflect dollars raised.
Richard Shadyac Jr., head of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital’s fundraising arm, for example, was paid about $700 for every million dollars the organization collected in private support in 2013. By contrast, Sherri Bishop at University Hospitals Health System made almost $14,000 per million dollars raised by her organization that year.
Who Pays the Big Bucks
Fundraisers working for hospitals, medical centers, and universities dominate The Chronicle survey’s roundup of top earners. That’s in part because these institutions have embraced incentive pay more than other nonprofits. All but five fundraisers on our list received bonuses; nine collected incentive pay that reached six figures.
