Once again there's a brouhaha forming over executive salaries. This case is in Toledo, Ohio. As reported in the Toledo Blade, the YMCA Exec is paid $265,000 a year and his total compensation package puts him just under $300,000. Oh, and his wife, the fund-raising director, makes $130,000 annually and, oh, his daughter-in-law who operates one of the branches, makes $85,000.
Now, as much as I want to say and do say, oh wow, that's a lot of money to be paying one guy who's operating a $30 million nonprofit with lots of buildings and lots of staff, I also want to note that, at least according to the article, the Nonprofit's board stands behind their salary decision and even point out the efforts they went through to make sure it was an appropriate decision. And you know, this is both their right and obligation. It's also up to them, with the help of the ED's wife (this may be a bigger issue but the article says that she does not report to him although I wonder why the position of Development Director doesn't report to the ED), to annually raise the money to pay the ED. Now again, according to the article, that has proven more difficult and apparently what helped elevate this to a media story is the plan to close one of the branches while still paying this pretty handsome sum of money.
So what to do? Again, a nonprofit board has the right and obligation to determine executive pay. For boards made up of corporate execs, compensation looks different than it might for other types of folks (think Wall Street). The board has to make sure there's a way to pay the bills of course, but their primary obligation is to see that results occur and mission is accomplished. If this Y-guy is making sure this is happening, maybe he's worth every penny and maybe more when compared to other Execs running similarly sized and complicated places.
Note, I first identified this story in the Chronicle of Philanthropy-Philanthropy Today.