Why Missouri Leads the Country in Nonprofit Executive Pay
The top-paying states for nonprofit executives are not the ones you would expect. Missouri leads. New York and Massachusetts follow. What the geography actually reveals is where large hospital systems headquarter their leadership.
If you ranked US states by average nonprofit executive compensation, which states would you guess appear at the top? Most people name New York, California, or Washington DC - coasts, cities, money.
The actual leader is Missouri, at $328,000 in average peak compensation. That is $72,000 ahead of New York and $87,000 ahead of California. The result looks like a data error until you understand what the data is actually measuring.
What the Ranking Really Measures
The state rankings below are averages across all disclosed nonprofit executives in a given state. A state's average is not a reflection of local wage levels or cost of living - it is a reflection of which nonprofit organizations headquarter their senior leadership there.
Missouri's first-place finish is driven almost entirely by a handful of national health systems headquartered in St. Louis and Kansas City:
- Ascension - one of the largest Catholic health systems in the country, HQ in St. Louis
- Mercy - multi-state Catholic health system, HQ in St. Louis
- BJC HealthCare - a major academic medical center with Washington University affiliation
- SSM Health - multi-state health system, HQ in St. Louis
When four billion-dollar health systems place their executives in one state, those executives' compensation pulls the statewide average upward dramatically, even though Missouri is not a particularly high-cost state.
The Broader Pattern
The same logic explains the rest of the top 10. New York and Massachusetts rank high because they host both academic medical centers (NYU, Columbia, Mass General Brigham, Beth Israel Deaconess) and major foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Gates affiliates, Kellogg). Maryland and Washington DC benefit from the cluster of national health and advocacy organizations near the federal government. Virginia gets a boost from Inova Health and several defense-related nonprofits.
Florida, despite its reputation as a low-tax retirement state, appears in the top 15 partly because PGA Tour Charities is headquartered there - an anomaly that produces an outlier $40 million executive entry and pulls the state average upward on its own.
States Ranked by Average Executive Compensation
| Rank | State | Executives | Avg Peak Comp | Highest Recorded |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Missouri | 35,064 | $328K | $16.4M |
| 2 | New York | 141,666 | $256K | $36.0M |
| 3 | Massachusetts | 55,526 | $241K | $35.1M |
| 4 | Maryland | 35,893 | $241K | $35.5M |
| 5 | Georgia | 33,769 | $239K | $35.5M |
| 6 | Washington DC | 45,771 | $239K | $14.4M |
| 7 | Virginia | 47,586 | $229K | $33.2M |
| 8 | Ohio | 61,448 | $224K | $25.5M |
| 9 | Pennsylvania | 72,718 | $222K | $22.9M |
| 10 | Michigan | 43,062 | $221K | $15.1M |
| 11 | Texas | 73,670 | $220K | $31.8M |
| 12 | Connecticut | 22,166 | $220K | $30.1M |
| 13 | Florida | 58,756 | $220K | $40.1M |
What State Averages Do Not Measure
Because the rankings reflect where organizations headquarter rather than where their workers live, they are not a reliable guide to what a nonprofit executive in that state typically earns. An executive director of a community nonprofit in Kansas City earns roughly the same as an equivalent role in Dallas, Atlanta, or Denver - regardless of which state happens to host a few billion-dollar health systems.
States without large nonprofit institutional anchors - much of the Mountain West and Great Plains - show lower averages not because pay there is uncompetitive, but because they have fewer multi-billion-dollar organizations skewing the top of the distribution.
For a state-by-state look at specific top earners by sector, the interactive compensation map shows the highest-paid executive in each state across healthcare, education, and overall rankings.
Compensation figures represent peak total compensation disclosed on IRS Form 990 filings, including base pay, bonus, deferred compensation, and other reportable income across all filing years (2001–2025). Separation packages, deferred-comp payouts, and emeritus/former officer entries have been excluded from these rankings, though one-time payments may still inflate individual totals. See the full methodology.
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