What actually sets the number — budget size, sector, metro tier and total compensation — and where to get benchmarks your board can put in the minutes.
If you are trying to work out what an executive director or CEO should earn at a Missouri nonprofit, the honest answer is that there is no single number — and any source giving you one without asking about your sector and budget size is giving you an average of markets you are not in.
Four variables do almost all the work.
Missouri has no state pay transparency statute, so nothing compels a nonprofit here to publish ranges — but Form 990 Part VII makes executive pay public regardless.
Median total compensation for an executive director or CEO at a $10M–$25M human services organisation in the Missouri nonprofit sector:
$188,000
Form 990–sourced, drawn from IRS e-file disclosures. Rounded, and offered as a market read rather than a quotation.
That is one number, and one number is not §4958 documentation. The rebuttable presumption turns on appropriate comparability data — the percentile range, the sector and budget cuts, the package components, and the peer set behind the figure. A board that takes a median off a web page has a weaker record than it thinks. Those sit in CauseComp, with a report built for review.
See the full Missouri benchmarks →We built CauseComp because the alternative — a national median quoted out of a survey with no sector or geography cut — is not “appropriate data as to comparability” under §4958, and a board relying on it has a weaker record than it thinks.
When you do have percentile data in front of you, the gap that matters is not between roles. It is between the 25th and 75th percentile inside a single row.
Two Missouri boards can both sit inside the market and be a six-figure distance apart, and both be defensible — because scope, tenure, sub-sector and who is actually available in that year all move the number. Landing at the 70th percentile is not a problem. Landing there with no written record of why that percentile was right for your organisation is.
That is not a compensation problem. It is a documentation problem, and it is the one §4958 punishes — the presumption requires the authorized body to have obtained and relied on appropriate comparability data before deciding, and to have documented the basis concurrently.
Part VII requires compensation reporting for officers, directors, trustees, key employees and highest compensated employees, with Schedule J adding detail for higher-paid individuals. That disclosure is public. It is both why defensible benchmarking data exists at all, and why a Missouri board should assume its decisions will be read by donors, journalists and peer organisations.
Where the decision is harder than a routine annual review — a founder transition, a merger, a deferred compensation arrangement, pay that has drifted outside the range — our St. Louis nonprofit practice advises directly.
Budget size first — it is the strongest single predictor and the gap between revenue bands is wider than the gap between most sectors. Then sector, then metro cost tier. And the figure that matters is total compensation, not base salary: IRS §4958 tests the whole package including deferred compensation, retirement contributions and taxable fringe benefits.
In CauseComp, our benchmarking platform. It carries Form 990–sourced executive and CFO total compensation at the 25th, 50th and 75th percentile, cut by sector, budget band and metro, with the base / benefits / deferred split behind each figure — and produces a board report built for §4958 review. We deliberately don't publish the percentile tables on this page.
Because a summary table is not §4958 documentation. The rebuttable presumption requires the authorized body to have obtained and relied on appropriate comparability data and to have documented the basis for its determination concurrently. A number on a web page gives a board neither the comparability set behind it nor the record it needs — and a board that treats it as sufficient is worse off than one that knows it needs more.
Materially, and in a direction that matters. Base salary understates the package that §4958 actually tests. Deferred compensation is the most common omission, because the accrual and the payment fall in different years and the benchmarking exercise tends to follow one or the other rather than both.
IRS Form 990 disclosures. Nonprofits report compensation for officers, directors, trustees, key employees and highest compensated employees in Part VII, with Schedule J adding detail for higher-paid individuals. CauseComp models that filing data with peer-cohort anchoring, ECI aging and a metro cost adjustment.
A CauseComp subscription gives you the report. Where the decision is harder, we advise directly — tell us which you need.
Tell us what you’re working through and we’ll follow up directly.