Senate Run Shines Light on Michelle Nunn’s Pay at Nonprofit

Michelle Nunn, the Points of Light Foundation president and CEO now running for U.S. Senate, got a significant pay boost while the charity she led was shedding workers, according to conservative magazine the National Review.

The Georgia Democrat was earning $120,000 a year as head of voluntarism group Hands On Atlanta when it merged in 2007 with Points of Light. She became the national group’s top official and was paid $250,000 in 2008. Her compensation reached $322,056 in 2011 but declined to $214,231 last year, according to the foundation’s 990 forms.

Points of Light, the country’s largest voluntarism charity, cut its work force from 175 to 80 from 2007 to 2010. Ms. Nunn is on leave from the group while campaigning for the Senate.

Ms. Nunn’s pay remains lower than that of her predecessor at Points of Light, who earned $350,000, and is well down the list of Atlanta’s highest-paid nonprofit executives, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, which reported her salary information when she announced her Senate bid last year

Read a 2009 Chronicle of Philanthropy article about Ms. Nunn and the Points of Light Foundation.