The median salary of the chief executives at the largest 100 charities in the UK has risen to £150,000, according to the latest survey from Charity Finance.
Charity Finance, published by Civil Society Media, found that the median remuneration package for chief executives at organisations in the Charity 100 Index was £150,000 in the past year - up from £145,000 when the survey was last published, two years ago.
The full report has been published online and features in the September issue of the magazine.
The mean salary is £178,000, higher than the £167,000 recorded in 2015, suggesting intense mainstream media scrutiny over voluntary sector wages has not had an impact. This figure is inflated by a few very high earners, mostly at medical charities.
Highest paid individuals
The highest paid chief executive was Steve Gray of Nuffield Health, who earned between £760,000 and £770,000. This is around £20,000 less than the top earner in 2015, the health charity’s former chief executive David Mobbs.
The top ten earners are as follows:
- Steve Gray, Nuffield Health. Pay range: £760,000-£770,000.
- Paul Holdem, London Clinic Trustees. Pay range: £540,000-£550,000.
- Jeremy Farrar, Wellcome Trust. Pay: £481,000.
- Peter Vicary-Smith, Consumers' Association. Pay: £464,000.
- Simon Cooke, Marie Stopes International. Pay range: £400,000-£410,000.
- Kate Hampton, Children’s Investment Fund Foundation (UK). Pay range: £338,000-£349,000.
- Gil Baldwin, St Andrew's Healthcare. Pay: £328,000.
- Julie Maxton, Royal Society. Pay range: £280,000-£290,000.
- Cheryl Giovannoni, Girls’ Day School Trust. Pay range: £260,000-£270,000.
- Alex Beard, Royal Opera House Covent Garden. Pay: £260,000.
By way of comparison, the FTSE 100 chief executives earned an average of £4.5m in 2016, according to the latest Office for National Statistics survey, 26 times the income for a top-100 charity chief executive.
Subscribers to Charity Finance can read the Chief Executives Survey 2017 here. Other readers can subscribe to Charity Finance here.
Editor's note: Article has been updated to include bonuses in Peter Vickery-Smith's salary.
In our article about the 2015 chief executives' survey, we used the figure for mean pay in the headline, as this article was produced at the same time as a number of national newspaper articles about chief executive pay, all of which used the mean average.
However as mean pay is inflated by a handful of individuals, we have chosen this time to use the median figure, which we feel is more accurate.
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