In 2024, 6,812 people at American nonprofits were paid more than a million dollars. Forty cleared $10 million. And more than one in four of them isn't an executive at all — they're a doctor.
"Nonprofit" is one of the most misleading words in the American economy. It describes the tax status of an organization — not the paychecks of the people who run it. In 2024, nearly seven thousand of them were paid at levels that would raise eyebrows in a corporate boardroom, all of it disclosed, line by line, on the one form every tax-exempt organization must file: the 990.
We pulled every officer, director, and key employee earning more than $1 million in total reported compensation, from organizations with at least $250,000 in revenue. Here is who's in the club — and it's not who you'd think.
Two of every three million-dollar nonprofit earners work in health care. Hospital systems and academic medical centers, not foundations or charities, are where the sector's real money is.
Physicians and surgeons make up more than a quarter of the club — 1,860 doctors paid over $1M, nearly matching the 2,022 CEOs and presidents. The million-dollar nonprofit job is increasingly a clinical one.
Every organization here owes a 21% federal excise tax on pay above $1M to its top earners (IRC §4960). That's 2,356 nonprofits writing checks to the IRS for the privilege of paying millions.
College football coaches — 94 of them in the club — post the highest median pay of any role, $2.3M. At a nonprofit university, the coach out-earns the president.
The same source and rigor as our CEO Pay Report — extended from chief executives to every million-dollar earner.
Compensation is reported as of each organization's fiscal year and can include deferred pay that vests in a single year — which is why some departing-executive figures run especially high. We lead with medians and counts, not averages.
A million dollars is the entry ticket, not the ceiling. The club narrows fast: from 6,812 people over $1M down to just 40 above $10M. But even the $1M floor puts every one of these earners in the top fraction of a percent of American workers.
Median club member earns $1.4M. The highest genuine nonprofit executive package was $30.9M.
Break the club down by role and the surprise is how few are chief executives. Doctors nearly match CEOs in number. And the people paid the most per head aren't running the organizations at all — they're coaching football teams and managing endowments.
Million-dollar earners by role. Bars show headcount; labels show the median for that role. Coaches and investment chiefs are few but out-earn everyone per head.
At a nonprofit university, the endowment's investment chief and the football coach both out-earn the president. One grows the money; the other fills the stadium.
The concentration is staggering. Of 6,812 million-dollar earners, 4,583 — two thirds — sit inside health-care organizations: hospital systems, academic medical centers, and insurers chartered as nonprofits. Education is a distant second. Everything else is a rounding error.
Million-dollar earners by NTEE industry category, 2024.
Strip out the athletes and the pass-through pay, and the executive summit looks exactly like the CEO Pay Report's: hospital systems, top to bottom, with two financial nonprofits — a Lutheran insurer and a credit union — crashing the list.
| # | Executive | Organization | Sector | Total pay |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | James Skogsbergh | Advocate Health (IL) | Health | $30,862,679 |
| 2 | Steven J. Corwin | NewYork-Presbyterian (NY) | Health | $26,271,976 |
| 3 | Eugene A. Woods | Wake Forest Baptist / Advocate (NC) | Health | $25,781,279 |
| 4 | Teresa Rasmussen | Thrivent Financial (MN) | Financial | $23,314,953 |
| 5 | Teresa Campbell | San Diego County Credit Union (CA) | Financial | $18,921,604 |
| 6 | Philip O. Ozuah | Montefiore Einstein (NY) | Health | $16,690,037 |
| 7 | Jeffrey R. Balser | Vanderbilt University Medical Center (TN) | Health | $16,481,139 |
| 8 | Javon Bea | Mercy Health System (WI) | Health | $16,336,153 |
| 9 | Ernie Sadau | CHRISTUS Health (TX) | Health | $14,656,684 |
| 10 | Wright L. Lassiter III | Dignity Health (IL) | Health | $14,175,319 |
Total reported compensation, tax year 2024. Deduplicated by person; affiliated-entity filings shown once. Excludes related for-profit pass-through pay (see methodology) and athlete compensation (see below).
"Nonprofit" covers a lot of ground. Some of the biggest paydays in the data belong to organizations most people would never file under charity — a golf tour, a credit union, a life insurer, a lobbying group, a university endowment desk.
The million-dollar earners are everywhere — all 50 states plus D.C. and Puerto Rico. New York leads with 791; even the smallest states have a cluster of hospital chiefs, university coaches, and health-plan executives clearing seven figures.
| State | $1M+ earners | Median pay |
|---|---|---|
| New York | 791 | $1,410,162 |
| California | 442 | $1,365,692 |
| Illinois | 398 | $1,400,987 |
| Pennsylvania | 394 | $1,439,777 |
| Texas | 356 | $1,382,751 |
| Ohio | 331 | $1,447,137 |
| District of Columbia | 288 | $1,341,732 |
| Missouri | 282 | $1,478,897 |
| New Jersey | 253 | $1,598,789 |
| Florida | 227 | $1,552,123 |
| Michigan | 209 | $1,498,970 |
| Virginia | 199 | $1,429,382 |
Top 12 states by number of million-dollar nonprofit earners. Full 50-state data available in 990iQ.
A word that means "no profit" now describes 6,812 people earning more than a million dollars a year. The 990 is the only place that truth is written down. 990iQ reads all of them.
Compensation, grants, financials, and peer benchmarks for more than 2 million U.S. nonprofits — the same data behind this report, at your fingertips. Look up any organization or executive, or benchmark your own.