A well-stocked wallet. Photograph: Toby Melville/PA
Possibly. But the overwhelming reaction from most people outside the third sector, I suspect, will be surprise that it has taken so long for median salaries in charity top management to break that barrier. There's a "watershed" symbolism to the figure £100,000 that will make some shudder, as if by surpassing it charities have stepped across a line that seperates virtuous prudence from incontinent greed. But this would be a quaint reaction: by comparison with the public sector, where top chief executives in large local authorities or NHS trusts or the upper echelons of Whitehall are measured by how far their salary outstrips that of of the prime minister (currently £187,000), charity CEO remuneration appears to be the very model of restraint. And let's not even begin to compare with the private sector.
Stephen Bubb, Association of Chief Executive of Voluntary Oragnisations chief executive (who as a charity CEO, failed to break the £100k barrier, earning £80,000-£90,000 plus £8,000 pension contributions according to Acevo's 2006-07 accounts) believes this is good news for the sector. He claims, as well he might, that "increasing salary levels are a good indicator that the professionalism and quality of ... (the sector's) leadership is being realised."
But I suspect the real reason CEO salaries are rising is because the third sector leadership talent pool is too small and underdeveloped to keep pace with the demands of an expanding and increasingly professional, complex and competitive industry. The survey notes that the sector is resolutely failing to nurture home grown leadership talent. Hence the need to buy-in expensive outside expertise - staggering 80% of charity CEOs come from the public or private sector. But this is unsuprising: charity boards are in many cases, it appears, barely fit for purpose: closed (57% of boards admitted "word of mouth" was the preferred means of recruiting a chairman), unrepresentative (only a third of boards have black and ethnic minority trustees), and unstrategic (CEO succession planning - the notion that a charities might "groom" future CEOs from within - is a minority pastime).
Hamish Davison, chairman of Rockpools headhunters, sponsors of the survey, says (as well he might) that the picture of governance in the voluntary sector remains "depressingly bleak."
So is £100,000 wrong? It's clearly a market rate (subsidised, one suspects, by the willingness of private and public sector CEOs to "downshift") but does it reflect individual performance? Outside the profit and loss of fundraising, I don't think we know enough about charity performance to tell.
