Who are Columbia’s highest-paid nonprofit organization administrators?

Can it be profitable to run a nonprofit? According to IRS documents it can. Some mid-Missourians heading such operations earn six-figure salaries.

Most of the highest-paid executives at Columbia-based nonprofit operations are from the health care industry. Primaris CEO Richard Royer tops the list, with an annual salary higher than $200,000, while half of the top 20 are directors of statewide or national associations, a Columbia Business Times analysis shows.

The findings reflect national trends. A 2007 salary survey by Board and Administrator magazine found that trade associations, multiple-service agencies and hospital/health agencies paid the highest average salaries. The Board and Administrator survey found that experience and budget size also affected pay.

Primaris, Missouri’s federally designated health care quality-improvement organization, has an annual revenue of $8 million, and its chief operating officer, Donald Glazer, is eighth on our list of top-paid local nonprofit directors, earning a salary and benefits of $147,000. Two executives at the Family Health Center of Boone County also earn six-figure salaries.

“Salaries in health care are high all across the country,” said Elizabeth Holden, CEO of the business consulting firm PrimePoint. “They have to remain competitive with for-profit health care.”

The second-highest salary on our list goes to the president of A Call to Serve International, an obscure organization that provides health care and other social services to the former Soviet republic of Georgia. Two executives of the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals have the third- and fourth-highest annual compensation.

The highest-paid Columbia-based director of an association with a statewide or national mission is R. Dennis McClelland at the Missouri Association of Realtors, who earns $161,000.

The highest-paid directors of local, non-medical social service agencies are Mark Hassemer, executive director of Alternative Community Training, who earns $109,000; Don Laird, president of the Columbia Chamber of Commerce, who earns $106,257 a year (nearly 11 percent of the chamber’s total annual revenue); and David Franta, executive director of the Missouri Area United Way, who makes $87,000.

Overall, the national average salary for nonprofit executives has jumped 8 percent from last year, to $91,041, Board and Administrator reported.

Cindy Mustard, executive director of the Voluntary Action Center, has viewed salary-setting dynamics from both sides. Mustard has worked in the nonprofit sector since 1965, and 10 years ago she and other members of the Boys and Girls Club board researched what other local nonprofits were paying their directors before choosing the agency’s first director.

Mustard said she has seen nonprofit administration “become a profession,” a process evident in the rising salaries of executives. “It used to be people who worked in nonprofit weren’t compensated as much but wanted to make a difference,” she said.

Having helped hire administrators—and having been hired as one herself—Mustard said that, as is the case with for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations want competent managers who ensure that the agency is run like a good business.

“We’re like a business, but your product is your service that you provide,” she said. For certain types of agencies, retaining a professional who can run the organization smoothly means offering a salary that can compete with the for-profit sector.

When putting together compensation packages, boards should conduct research to see where their organizations fit in the market, recommends Holden, who works with both nonprofit and for-profit companies in Missouri and other states.

“Run comparisons,” Holden said. “Look at organizations of your size, number of employees, revenue, in a similar city—similar in terms of size, population and number of nonprofits.”