CEO Pay: Under $500K

Top-officer compensation under $500K covers the largest swath of paid nonprofit leadership in the United States. The 218 organizations in this band include local charities, single-program nonprofits, advocacy groups, and many smaller regional foundations. At this scale, compensation often represents 5% or more of total revenue, but the absolute dollar figure is well below the corporate equivalent for similar role complexity.

CEO-pay ranges aggregate organizations by the total compensation reported for the highest-paid officer on Schedule J of the Form 990. The 218 under $500k in this band cover a wide variety of categories and revenue scales.

The 218 organizations in the under $500k pay band in this view together report $179.4B in combined annual revenue on their most recent IRS Form 990 filings. Median revenue is $59.3M, and the simple average is $823.1M — a gap that reflects the long-tail distribution typical of the nonprofit sector, where a handful of large organizations account for most aggregate dollars.

Across the 218 organizations in the under $500k pay band we track, 20 earn an A and 76 earn a B on the Efficiency Score (combined 44% in the top two tiers, with A-grade organizations alone at 9%). Another 95 land at C, 21 at D, and 6 at F — a combined 12% in the bottom two tiers based on financial reserves, revenue-growth consistency, and officer-comp ratio drawn from each organization's most recent Form 990.

Hospital and university executives reliably top the nonprofit compensation tables because they compete for the same talent as for-profit health systems and corporate executives. Disease-research foundations and large arts institutions sit a step below. Advocacy groups and direct-service charities cluster in the lower bands, where compensation is closer to senior-staff scale than to corporate-executive scale.

When reading any single number, the comp-to-revenue ratio is the single most useful comparison metric. A 0.5% ratio is typical for organizations over $500M in revenue; a 5% ratio is typical for organizations under $10M. Numbers far outside the typical band for the organization’s revenue tier are the ones that warrant a closer look at Schedule J line items.

The NonprofitTruth Efficiency Score is a 0–100 composite that summarizes three signals the IRS Form 990 feed actually reports: financial health and months of operating reserves on the balance sheet (40% of the score), revenue-growth consistency over multiple years (35%), and current-officer compensation as a share of revenue (25%). It does not include a program-spending ratio — total program service expenses are not exposed by the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer feed, and we do not estimate that figure. The grade A–F mapping is purely descriptive — it summarizes the financial structure that the 990 reveals, not the social impact, program quality, or outcomes of the work the organization does. Donors evaluating impact should pair these financial signals with program-level evaluations from sources like Charity Navigator, GiveWell, or the organization's own audited reports.

All financials on this page come from each organization's IRS Form 990 — the federal information return that 501(c)(3) public charities, private foundations, and most other tax-exempt organizations must file annually. The Form 990 is a public document. We ingest it primarily through the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer feed, which mirrors the IRS Tax-Exempt Organization Search dataset. Original e-file XML and PDF copies of any return can be looked up directly at the IRS, ProPublica, or the Candid (formerly GuideStar) directory.

Schedule J of every Form 990 in this list is available free from the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, and the Candid (GuideStar) directory. ProPublica is the easiest path to view multi-year compensation history in a single view.