There’s a new highest-paid nonprofit employee in Arkansas — by a mile.
Dr. Brad Patrick Baltz, who became a nonprofit employee when Hematology Oncology Services of Arkansas was acquired by Central Arkansas Radiology Therapy Institute Inc. at the beginning of 2013, was paid more than $2.3 million in the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2015. That’s the most recent data available from the IRS Form 990 that CARTI, like all nonprofits, is required to make public.
Baltz is the first nonprofit employee to top the $2 million mark in compensation in the four years that Arkansas Business has compiled this list, and he did not appear on last year’s list because he was not among the employees whose salaries were listed in CARTI’s previous 990.
Arkansas Business’ first list of nonprofit compensation, published in March 2013, included only one seven-figure nonprofit executive. Last year there were 15, and this year’s research found two dozen.
(Get the List: The Highest-Paid Nonprofit Employees in Arkansas)
Of the 24 nonprofit employees whose total compensation — salary plus reported benefits — exceeded $1 million, 22 are employed in the health care field. The other two are No. 2 Nick Brown and No. 17 Carl Monroe, the CEO and COO of Southwest Power Pool, the regional electricity transmission organization headquartered in Little Rock that is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.
Brown’s pay in 2014 reached nearly $1.9 million, more than double the total compensation of about $878,000 he received in 2013.
Except in the case of CARTI, which is the subject of an in-depth article in this issue, the 990s used to rank this week’s list are the most recent available from Guidestar.org, itself a nonprofit.
The 990s for this list were reviewed individually on PDFs and input into a database by hand, a process that virtually guarantees errors and omissions. The IRS is gradually making data from 990s available in digital form; in June, Amazon Web Services announced the availability of 990 data from 2011 forward, with more 990s being added each month.
But while Amazon Web Services bragged that the data can be “easily” accessed and “quickly” processed, those adverbs may only apply to high-end data crunchers.
“We’re glad the IRS has made this available, but it’s not very useful to the average human being,” Rick Cohen, director of communications and operations for the National Council of Nonprofits in Washington, said.
Even as data becomes more readily available for analysis by think tanks and academic institutions, the nonprofit sector remains misunderstood — particularly when it comes to salaries, which can be skewed when reduced to averages.
“A large hospital is going to be paying people on a different scale than your local animal shelter,” Cohen said.
Even nonprofits “have to compete with for-profits for the same talent and for people who can help them with their mission,” Cohen said.
An expanded list of 368 nonprofit employees earning $200,000 or more is available for purchase from ArkansasBusiness.com/lists.
List Methodology
Nonprofit organizations — essentially businesses with no shareholders that are engaged in a mission for the public benefit — are exempt from federal income taxes, but they are required to file annual financial reports with the Internal Revenue Service.
Such a report is known as an IRS Form 990, although there are variations in the form depending on the nonprofits’ total revenue and purpose. The 990s include revenue, expenditures, assets, investments and, most important for this week’s list, compensation paid to directors, trustees, officers and key employees.
They must include the compensation of the highest-paid employees and those who are paid more than $100,000 a year. 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 (and, in a few cases, independent contractors) of Arkansas nonprofits by total compensation. That compensation is broken out into salary and “other compensation.”
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 June 30, 2014, and Dec. 31, 2015, and the fiscal year end date is noted in each entry on the list.
Because the data is between 10 and 28 months old, some of the individuals may no longer be employed by the nonprofit listed or may not have the same title. When Arkansas Business was aware of a change or departure, it was noted.
Arkansas Business has long reported publicly available salary information — in lists of the highest-paid state employees, executives of publicly traded companies headquartered in Arkansas, electric and gas utilities, public school superintendents, nonprofit hospitals and the largest nonprofit organizations.
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.
Arkansas is home to nearly 14,000 nonprofits, and 95 percent of them have annual revenue of less than $1 million. With the deliberate exception of electric cooperative executives whose salaries have long been 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. Some smaller organizations paying relatively large salaries may have been overlooked. Omissions or errors should be reported to Editor Gwen Moritz at GMoritz@ABPG.com.
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