SURVEY Pay keeps rising for chief officers at top nonprofits

NEW YORK (AP) -- The chief executives of the country's largest nonprofit organizations won median pay raises of 4.3 percent last year, but some of them have enjoyed substantially larger increases over time, according to a new survey.
The survey, compiled by The Chronicle of Philanthropy and released today, found that 45 top executives of charities, foundations, universities and other nonprofits earned $500,000 or more.
Overall, median increase for nonprofit CEOs rose 4.3 percent in 2002, nearly twice the rate of inflation. But over the past five years, cumulative raises granted to some of those surveyed were much larger.
The top gainers include William H. Gray III, the president of the United Negro College Fund, whose pay rose 132 percent over five years from $175,000 in 1997 to $404,427 in 2002.
Thomas M. Lofton, chairman of the Lilly Endowment, was paid $822,000 last year, an 83 percent rise since 1997.
Pay for Susan V. Berresford, the president of the Ford Foundation, has risen 48 percent to $651,713.
Those figures are all separate from the cost of benefits paid to the executives.
At 38 of the 329 non-profits surveyed by the Chronicle, the highest-paid employee besides the CEO also made at least $500,000 and in some cases made more than their boss, the survey found.