Pay for California Charity Leaders Lags Behind Inflation Rate, Studies Find

The median pay for leaders of California nonprofit organizations did not keep pace with inflation this year,

according to two surveys of compensation and benefits released by the Center for Nonprofit Management Southern California. The rate of inflation since last year is 2.93 percent, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

The median pay for California charity leaders was $88,005 as of January 1 this year, according to the surveys. That figure represents an increase of less than 1 percent for executives in Southern and Central California: In the same survey last year, the median salary was $87,360, meaning that half made more and half made less. The median pay of charity leaders in Northern California, $88,145, was nearly flat, according to a similar survey last year.

The data come from two reports, one based on information from 252 groups in Southern and Central California, and the other on 288 groups in the northern part of the state.

123 Jobs Examined

While the Center for Nonprofit Management has conducted its survey of Southern and Central California nonprofit salaries since 1990, it only this year began gathering data on salaries at groups in the northern part of the state. It adopted a model used by the Management Center, a San Francisco organization that ceased operations in May and had conducted the survey since 1987.

The surveys each track compensation for 123 different nonprofit jobs. Among the findings in both surveys:

Executive directors. In the Southern and Central California survey, leaders of nonprofit organizations in Los Angeles made the most, with a median salary of $91,416. The lowest median pay — $65,104 — went to leaders in the Inland Empire area, which comprises Imperial, Riverside, and San Bernardino Counties. In the Northern California survey, the highest median pay for chief executives went to leaders of groups in the San Mateo and Santa Clara area ($100,006) and the lowest was at organizations in the North State-Sierra Nevada region ($61,901).

Chief financial officers. The survey of Southern and Central California nonprofit groups reported that chief financial officers made a median salary of $77,584, down from $79,602 in last year’s survey. In Northern California, chief financial officers made a median salary of $75,005, up from $70,000 in last year’s study.

Development directors. Chief fund raisers in Southern and Central California made a median of $69,992, an increase from last year’s median salary of $66,123; those employees made slightly less — a median of $66,851 — in Northern California, a decrease from $68,245 last year.

Directors of programs. These employees earned a median of $64,938 in Southern and Central California, up from last year’s median of $54,995; in Northern California, they made a median salary of $60,975, up from $55,000 last year.

In both surveys, the largest share of respondents worked for social-service groups — 81 of the 252 nonprofit organizations in the Southern and Central California identified themselves that way, as did 111 of the 288 participants in the Northern California study.

Copies of the reports on the 2004 compensation and benefits surveys can be purchased from the Center for Nonprofit Management, 606 Olive Street, Suite 2450, Los Angeles, Calif. 90014, or ordered online at the center’s site, http://www.cnmsocal.org. The reports are priced on a sliding scale based on the size of an organization’s budget.

A sampling of the findings are available on The Chronicle‘s Web site, http://philanthropy.com