After various scandals involving executive?s salary in Non-Profit corporations, the question comes up, what is appropriate compensation for such executives. That isn?t at first clear, so let?s look at a number of problem cases.

Mr. Oral Suer was convicted of two felony charges for stealing $500,000 from the United Way charity organization. He had been head of the United Way for 27 years.

According to Charles W. Anderson, Mr. Suer actually stole over $2.4 million over his 27-year term in office. The head of the charity complains that their organization suffered ?irreparable harm? and large reductions in donations. It also stopped direct solicitations from federal employees. Mr. Suer was sentenced to 27-months in federal prison in May 2004.

Some Congressman have for a while questioned the relatively high salaries that Non-Profit organization heads receive. There is a danger that this can shade into demagoguery against entire organizations, which is done in order to shut the organization down or question their entire budget. . This is the case with some of the rhetoric over funding of the Head Start program, a Federal program to help low-income children.

One director of the KCMC Child Development Corp. was cited as being scandalous for receiving over $800,000 in pay over the last three years, with one year being paid over $300,000. Crompton oversees 11 Head Start centers in the Kansas City area, in Kansas and Missouri. In a letter, the Department of Health and Human Services told KCMC that they had to explain why the compensation did not violate federal regulations on paying ?reasonable? wages or face having to repay all or some of the money. Nearly 80 percent of KCMC's $26.6 million in revenue in fiscal 2002 came from federal tax money.

However, Mr. Crompton contends that he is being scandalized in retaliation for his expose of attended cuts in the budget, and changes in the program that he oversees. Although this salary may be considered fairly high, it could be argued that this needs to rival salaries in the private sector, in order to attract top executive leadership for Non-Profit Corporations.

In another example of fairly high salaries for executives at non-profits, in the San Antonio, Texas area, the 20 leading executives make an average of about $386,000, with all making above $200,000 per year, according to the San Antonio Express News.

The largest salary listed is for John C. Hagee, a television evangelist, employed by a church who made in 2003 over $1.2 million. You have to question, that if such persons wanted to be involved in human service work, wouldn?t they understand that they would receive salaries less than the private sector? Apparently this is not the case.

These scandals have become a hot topic since Richard Grasso, the former executive of the New York Stock Exchange, resigned after a pay scandal late in 2003. Mr. Grasso is currently being sued for receiving $140 million in ?unreasonable compensation? during his term of chairman of the NYSE which is a Non-Profit Corporation. The non-profit sector has grown at a high rate, to now 1.2 million Non-Profit Corporations, which include hospitals, churches, museums, child and youth programs and others.

Howard Giske is a legal consultant with   http://www.legalformsguide.com and    http://www.incparadise.com .