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CARTI Docs Again Get Highest Nonprofit Salaries

3 min read

Oncologists from Central Arkansas Radiation Therapy Institute again dominate the list of the state’s highest-paid nonprofit employees, occupying four of the top five positions with total compensation of $1.57 million to $2.3 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2016.

Seven CARTI physicians earned more than $1 million in that fiscal year, led by Dr. Brad Baltz with total compensation of $2.3 million. They are among 24 nonprofit employees, all but one a physician or health care executive, who earned seven figures in the most recent year for which data was available.

The highest-paid nonprofit employee who doesn’t work in health care is Nicholas A. Brown, CEO of Southwest Power Pool in Little Rock. He ranks 19th with 2015 compensation of $1.16 million, which was a reduction from the previous year.

The salary data comes from an annual report that tax-exempt nonprofits are required to file with the Internal Revenue Service. Such a report is known as an IRS Form 990, and there are slight variations in the forms depending on the nonprofits’ total revenue and purpose.

In addition to compensation paid to directors, officers and key employees, the 990s include revenue, expenditures and assets, which were used to create the separate list of the state’s largest nonprofit organizations. The Walton Family Foundation Inc. of Bentonville is the largest nonprofit, with assets of $2.66 billion at the end of 2015.

Unlike individual income tax returns, the 990s are public documents, and several organizations have used the internet to archive them for public use. One of those organizations is Guidestar.org, and Arkansas Business has relied on its archives for this project, which ranks the highest-paid employees of Arkansas nonprofits by total compensation. That compensation is broken out into salary and “other compensation.”

Except for CARTI’s report, the 990s used in this week’s list were the most recent available from GuideStar’s website, and the lag time varies. The fiscal years researched ended between March 31, 2015, and Oct. 31, 2016, and the fiscal year end date is noted in each entry on the list.

CARTI provided its most recent 990 directly to Arkansas Business, as the one currently available through GuideStar was the one used in last year’s list of nonprofit employee compensation. This is true for several other nonprofits, but only CARTI was asked for more recent data because its salaries have been among the highest and because its finances have been stretched thin before and after opening an $88 million treatment center in west Little Rock in late 2015.

Published in this issue is the compensation data of the 175 highest-paid nonprofit employees, cutting off at $380,072. Last year, it took total compensation of $354,625 to make the top 175, suggesting that nonprofit salaries are increasing although the fiscal years are not identical and some of the data is repeated from last year.

Arkansas Business identified 401 nonprofit employees whose compensation packages totaled at least $200,000.

Because the data used in the list is between 11 and 31 months old, some of the individuals may no longer be employed by the nonprofit listed or may not have the same title.

Compensation for nonprofit employees is gently regulated by the IRS, which requires only that nonprofits pay executives “fair and reasonable compensation,” according to a 2011 white paper by GuideStar. GuideStar identifies Arkansas as home to 14,868 nonprofits, and 95 percent of them have annual revenue of less than $1 million.

With the deliberate exception of electric cooperative executives whose salaries are reported in our annual utility lists, we believe we have captured most of the nonprofit employees who received compensation packages of approximately $350,000 or more during those recent fiscal years.

Omissions or errors should be reported to Editor Gwen Moritz at GMoritz@ABPG.com.

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