We buy into a lot of strange ideas in the US. We seem to have very little trouble with Tom Cruise making $20-25 million a film–or with Kobe Bryant making over $21 million for playing basketball. But if a teacher makes $60,000 a year we think him or her grossly overpaid–especially if they are getting health insurance as part of the deal.
Last week I wrote a piece about what had inspired me to begin this series earlier than I would have liked to: the mess at Komen for the Cure. In that piece I brought up the salary of the person at the top–the CEO. Charity Navigator reported the salary at the time as about $450,000. This week, they have updated to the 2011 figure, which is $417,171. That still sounds to most of us like a lot of money.
But in terms of what CEOs at other cancer charities make versus how much the charity brings in a year, the number is not far out of line. Of the 53 cancer charities whose financial statements I have looked at, the Komen CEO’s salary finishes ninth overall–and ranks second among those charities which focus exclusively on breast cancer. Komen ($320,212,055) finishes fifth in total donations overall, trailing the big four–the American Cancer Society ($893,933,907), the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute ($875,398,336) and the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital ($832,315,232) and City of Hope (total revenues, $891,189,944 but only $651,939,636 in individual donations)–by over $500,000,000.
The top salary in cancer charities goes to none of the above, though. Instead it goes to the top gun at the Prostate Cancer Foundation. He handles nowhere near the finances of any of the above. PCF raised a total of $40,188,315 from all sources yet their CEO received a salary of $1,204,968. That is about a quarter of a million dollars ahead of the second place finisher.
The head of Dana-Farber at $943,858 a year is that second place finisher. Including government grants and donations from foundations, he manages $894,169,076 worth of donations. In addition, he is responsible for the day-to-day running of a major cancer treatment and research center with nearly 4,000 employees and nearly 300,000 patient visits a year.
The third highest salary goes to the top person at the ACS. He pulled down $914,906 according to the most recent figures on Charity Navigator. He oversaw a total budget from individual, NGO and government (less than one percent) contributions of $930,432,308. The organization is huge, with close to three million volunteers nationwide. They claim one percent of all Americans participate in the Relay For Life each year.
Fourth on the list is the head of the Breast Cancer Research Foundation who makes $557,992 per year. The organization only grossed $36,214,286 last year–well behind Komen’s figure. The group does have one of the more efficient fundraising operations among the major cancer charities at 6.1 percent and spends only 2.6 percent of its money on administration.
The person at the top of the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society receives a salary of $518,499–which rounds out the top five. That individual oversees the raising and use of $246,744,046 in funds.
Sixth on the list is the person who runs the St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, TN, at $512,670. Like the head of Dana-Farber, he also runs a major research and treatment facility–in this case with overnight beds for its patients. But the cost of living in Memphis is substantially less than the cost of living in Boston, so perhaps that explains the difference in the two salaries.
The head of the Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory–a lab that does cancer research as well as research into a number of other biological and medical areas–finishes seventh in terms of salary at $498,596. Some would argue he does not actually belong on this list since his lab does not work exclusively on cancer. Their total collections for last year were $144,576,370. That was substantially more than either the PCF or the BCRF raised–substantially more than the two raised combined.
The eighth highest paid cancer exec in those 53 charities reviewed is in charge of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute at $422,252. That institute had donations of $26,221,857 last year.
Komen’s CEO finishes ninth on the list.
Finishing off the top ten is the head of the Samuel Waxman Cancer Research Institute at $399,872. That organization raises only $4,504,305, substantially less than any other group in the top ten for CEO salary.
The top administrator at City of Hope is not compensated on the charity side, but does receive a salary of $1,110,580 from affiliated groups. I assume that means the hospital pays the individual entirely out of non-charity income. That would place him second on the salary list.
Of the three and four star cancer charities I have reviewed on Charity Navigator’s list, top administrator salaries ranged as low as $41,000. Generally, as salaries decreased so did the size of the operation the person was responsible for running–although that was not always the case.
Of course without the full job description in front of us, it is hard to know what any of these people should be paid–or whether those drawing high salaries at smaller organizations are not working just as hard as those at larger operations because they have to wear more hats than they would in larger organizations with larger staffs.
But if we compare most of these people to their private sector equivalents we could conclude that many of them are underpaid for what they do.
I also looked at salaries for similar positions in the private sector. The CEO at CBS, for example, generated and managed gross revenues of $400 million last year–drawing a salary of nearly $58 million for his efforts. The president of Merck had net revenues $982 million, for which he was paid nearly $17 million.
(Next: Fundraising efficiency.)
(If you are looking for another place worthy of a donation, visit Charity Navigator. They are a treasure trove of information on every major charity you can think of.)
