Foundation Salaries Rose 4%; CEO Median Pay Hits $115,000

Foundation employees received a median pay raise of 4 percent last year, the same percentage gain as in 2004,

according to a new report by the Council on Foundations, in Washington. While the increase barely outpaced the 2005 annual inflation rate of 3.4 percent, it was higher than the 3.1-percent average increase in compensation received by all workers in the United States, except those in the federal government.

The “2005 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report” is based on data from 742 foundations that reported salaries for a total of 6,145 full-time employees. Much of the information in the study is for 2004, but 95 percent of the foundations were also able to provide information on salary increases for 2005.

Chief executive officers of foundations received a median salary of $115,000 last year, meaning half made more and half made less. That was a 4.5-percent increase from 2004, when the median salary was $110,000.

The median salary for program directors, however, increased by less than 1 percent, from $94,889 in 2004 to $95,594 last year.

Salaries varied significantly depending on foundation size, type (community, corporate, family, independent, or public), and geographic region. The median chief-executive salary at independent foundations, for example, was $187,376, while the median pay for the same position at community foundations was $88,446.

The median salary for foundation chief executive officers was highest in the Northeast ($139,863) and lowest in the Midwest ($95,200).

Among the report’s other findings:

Executive perquisites. Forty-five percent of community, private, and public foundations provided special benefits to their chief executives, the survey found. (The report excluded corporate foundations when compiling these figures because they tend to follow the policies of their sponsoring companies.) A car phone or cellular phone was the most popular added benefit, followed by a car, and club membership. More than a third of the foundations that provided special benefits to the CEO’s included one or more of those perks.

Nearly a quarter of private, community, and public foundations also provided their chief executives with deferred compensation in 2004, which ranged from $885 to $750,000, with a median of $12,000. Twenty percent of those foundations also reported awarding bonuses to their CEO’s in 2004, which ranged from $100 to $110,000, with a median of $5,495.

Benefits. Seven in 10 foundations said they cover 100 percent of their employees’ health-insurance costs. Median monthly health-care costs were $436 per individual employee, $1,280 per family covered. The median cost of total staff benefits as a proportion of total salaries was 26 percent.

Diversity of employees. The survey’s demographic data on foundation employees showed that women continue to account for more than three quarters of foundation workers. According to the report, 76.2 percent of all foundation jobs were held by women last year, up one percentage point from 2004. However, women do not necessarily hold such a high percentage of top jobs: 55 percent of chief executive officers or chief giving officers were women. Corporate foundations had the highest percentage of female employees (86.9 percent) and independent foundations the lowest (73 percent).

Minorities made up 22.9 percent of the foundation work force last year, up nearly a full percentage point from 2004. Nearly 7 percent of chief-executive positions were held by minorities. Public foundations had the highest percentage of minority employees (29.2 percent) and family foundations had the lowest (19.2 percent).

Conflict-of-interest policies. Seventy percent of foundations reported they had a written conflict-of-interest policy for their staff members, up from 65 percent in 2004.

Community and public foundations were more likely to have such written policies, and private foundations less likely to do so.

Copies of the “2005 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report” may be obtained by calling the Council on Foundations’ Publications Department at (888) 239-5221, or by going online to the council’s Web site at http://www.cof.org. The price of the print version is $79 for council members and $149 for nonmembers. A CD-ROM version is available for $39 for members and $79 for nonmembers.

WHAT FOUNDATION WORKERS MAKE: MEDIAN SALARIES