How Survey on Salaries Was Compiled

Despite a new federal law that will soon force charities to make salary information more readily available to the public, more than a dozen organizations in The Chronicle’s salary survey required an in-person visit to obtain the information or declined to give it out at all.

The annual survey is compiled from figures on the Forms 990, federal tax returns that non-profit groups file each year with the Internal Revenue Service.

The forms contain financial data about the organization and include compensation information about the group’s key officials and highest-paid employees.

Charities and foundations have long been required to show their tax forms to anybody who visits their offices.

In 1996, Congress stiffened the rule and said that charities must send the material to anybody who requests it.

Foundations do not have to follow the new rule, although they are required to show their tax forms on request within 180 days after they publish a notice saying the returns are available.

When they were drafting the new law, members of Congress said they expected non-profit groups to start complying with the law immediately. However, they said organizations would not be required to do so until the Treasury Department issued regulations that explained how the law would be enforced. Proposed rules came out a year ago, and final rules are expected by the end of the year.

Six of the groups that declined to participate in The Chronicle’s survey are not required to file the 990 because of their religious affiliations.

Six other organizations stuck to the letter of the current federal disclosure law and required a representative of The Chronicle to show up at their offices to look at the form.

Compensation figures were received from 230 organizations. Most of the figures were gleaned from the Forms 990, but in cases where charities had not yet completed the form, salary information was provided by officials at the organizations.

Officials at 18 religious organizations that are exempt from filing the form also provided the data.

With a few exceptions, the information is for the 1997 fiscal year.

The charities were included in the survey because they ranked highest in their respective categories in last year’s Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle‘s annual list of organizations that raise the most money from private sources.

The foundations were included because they had the most assets among private grant makers according to the 1998 edition of The Foundation Directory, published by the Foundation Center, in New York.

The six organizations that required visits for this year’s salary survey were: Richard King Mellon Foundation (Pittsburgh)

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center (New York)

Mount Sinai Medical Center (New York)

Salk Institute for Biological Studies (La Jolla, Cal.)

Starr Foundation (New York)

Taft School (Watertown, Conn.)

Officials at Taft expressed particular concern about providing the institution’s Form 990 because of what they called the boarding school’s “strong tradition of privacy.” When The Chronicle said it would send a representative to look at the forms in person, school officials initially said they might not make the document available. Ultimately, however, Taft officials decided to show the 990 to the Chronicle representative.

The six religious groups that declined to provide compensation information were:

Catholic Foreign Mission Society of America (Maryknoll Fathers and Brothers) (Maryknoll, N.Y.)

Christian Aid Ministries (Berlin, Ohio)

The Jewish Theological Seminary of America (New York)

Pepperdine University (Malibu, Cal.)

Sacred Heart League (Walls, Miss.)

St. Labre Indian School (Ashland, Mont.)

The following 18 religious groups provided the salary information even though they do not have to file Forms 990: American Bible Society (New York)

Billy Graham Evangelistic Association (Minneapolis)

Campus Crusade for Christ (Orlando, Fla.)

Catholic Charities USA (Alexandria, Va.)

Catholic Medical Mission (New York)

Catholic Relief Services (Baltimore)

Christian Broadcasting Network (Virginia Beach)

Christian and Missionary Alliance (Colorado Springs)

Focus on the Family (Colorado Springs)

In Touch Ministries (Atlanta)

Jewish Communal Fund (New York)

Moody Bible Institute of Chicago

National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA (New York)

The Navigators (Colorado Springs)

Salvation Army (Alexandria, Va.)

Trinity Christian Center (Trinity Broadcasting Network) (Washington)

Wycliffe Bible Translators (Huntington Beach, Cal.)

Young Life (Colorado Springs)

Two hospitals run by the University of Texas — the M. D. Anderson Cancer Center and Southwestern Medical Center — are exempt from filing Forms 990 because they are part of a public university. But the hospitals released salary information under Texas’s public-disclosure law.

Officials at the University of California at San Francisco said they were willing to disclose the compensation information, but they did not do so in time for inclusion in the survey.

Figures in the survey must be compared with great care because organizations often differ in the way they report their employees’ compensation. While the Form 990 asks for compensation to be broken into three categories — salary, benefits, and expenses — often the figures are lumped together into one. In other cases, benefit and expense information is not reported at all.

In addition, the form does not require charities to note partial-year salaries or other circumstances that may help explain the figures. Thus, comparing salaries from year to year or from group to group may be problematic.

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The Chronicle’s salary survey was compiled by Thomas J. Billitteri, Debra E. Blum, Katharine LaBruna, Jennifer Moore, and Grant Williams.