University staff dominate the ranks of the top charity executive pay packets, but they don't make number one.
Business investigations reporter Matt Nippert crunches the numbers - and compares vice-chancellors, general secretaries and chief executives - to deliver New Zealand’s first charity executive pay survey.
They may not be for-profit, but the top end of the charity sector is serious business with executives of our country’s largest charities managing billions and in some cases earning as much as - or more than - Cabinet ministers.
In a New Zealand-first survey of charitable executive pay, the Herald analysed the Charities Register to find entities with both annual revenues and assets of more than $70m. Nearly three-dozen entities made the cut and this group accounts for a significant slice of the economy. The 32 charities in the survey pool recorded more than $8b in combined annual revenues, manage more than $25b in assets, and employ 51,740 people in full- and part-time employment.
The pool reflects a broad range of charitable structures, ranging from health and social service providers, Māori and iwi groupings, religious orders, most of the country’s universities, and several commercial businesses geared towards charitable ends (notably BestStart Educare, cereal-maker Sanitarium, Christchurch’s Isaac Construction, and kiwifruit grower and dairy grouping Trinity Lands).
Charity reporting standards do not require the disclosure of chief executive pay, but their annual reports do list the number of senior managers and total pay provided to them each financial year. Dividing this remuneration by reported full-time-equivalent key management staff levels gives a reasonable estimation of average executive pay. While reporting dates differ, all have filed accounts covering at least the second half of 2022.
The largest charity identified in this survey, St John of God Healthcare, was excluded. Despite reporting $2b in revenues and its executives making $523,960 each on average, only a small fraction of its work takes place in New Zealand: 320 of its staff, and no executives, are locally-based. By contrast the Perth-based charity reports nearly 12,000 staff overall with the vast majority of them, and their healthcare businesses, in Australia.
This exercise identified 326 charity executives at 31 organisations who were collectively paid $75m, an average of $246,697 each, over the most recent year for which accounts are available. Average pay for this cohort increased over the previous year by 4.6 per cent, broadly in line with inflation, but there was considerable variation.
While executive pay levels tended to rise with revenue, staffing levels, and asset bases, there were some surprising outliers and quite marked differences between sectors.
Religious organisations, often with substantial property holdings accumulated during their long histories, tended to pay key management personnel much lower salaries than their secular peers with none making the list below detailing the 20 highest-paid charity executive teams.
For instance the Salvation Army anchors the bottom of charity executive pay in this sample by barely paying its key executives a living wage. Despite turning over $242m annually in donations and social service contracts, and employing nearly 2500 staff, each key manager there is recorded as being paid an average of $63,103 per year.
What follows is a ranked list of the 20 highest-paid charity executives in New Zealand.
Chief executive Carriann Hall
Average executive salary: $207,500 (10.8% change year-on-year)
Total staff employed: 812
Annual revenue: $85m
Total assets: $179m
Founded in 1962, CHT Healthcare was originally known as the Christian Hospital Trust Board. It now operates 21 aged care homes across the upper North Island. * This entry replaces MIT, which was deregistered as a charity in September 2022when it joined Te Pūkenga
Chief executive Peter Tynan
Average executive salary: $210,116 (-1.9%)
Total staff employed: 42
Annual revenue: $71m
Total assets: $136m
Endowed in 1988 with the proceeds of the sale of community-held shares in the Auckland Savings Bank, Foundation North manages these funds and distributes the resulting investment returns to worthy causes in Auckland and Northland.
Secretary-General Sarah Stuart-Black
Average executive salary: $210,976 (+10.8%)
Total staff employed: 529
Annual revenue: $80m
Total assets: $133m
The New Zealand branch of the world’s largest humanitarian organisation was founded in 1915 to support troops abroad during World War I, but has grown to be arguably the country’s high-profile charity raising funds for, and responding to, disasters. It raised a staggering $128m in an appeal following the Christchurch earthquakes, and another $23m following last year’s Cyclone Gabrielle.
Chief executive Peter McBride
Average executive salary: $219,111 (-1.9%)
Total staff employed: 63
Annual revenue: $111m
Total assets: $700m
One of the smallest charities by staff size on this list, it is nonetheless one of the largest landholders with dairy farms stretched across 7400 hectares based largely in the Waikato. Trinity Lands is a grouping of a network of Open Brethren-run charities and its move into kiwifruit production in 2002 has seen it become the largest individual shareholder of national kiwifruit marketer Zespri.
Chief executive John Cook
Average executive salary: $225,443 (+2.5%)
Total staff employed: 1150
Annual revenue: $158m
Total assets: $196m
Emerge was formed in 2015 from the merger of health and social services charities Richmond Services and Recovery Solutions and the combined entity now provides mental health, drug addiction, and housing services nationwide.
Chief executive Barbara Bridger
Average executive salary: $233,900 (+9.6%)
Total staff employed: 79
Annual revenue: $126m
Total assets: $571m
Central Lakes Trust was born out of the Otago Central Power Trust, using its ownership of Pioneer Energy to become the largest philanthropic trust in the Southern Hemisphere. Dividends from Pioneer have been used to build an investment pool, the proceeds of which are used to pay for charitable projects in the central South Island community.
Chief executive Ralph Jones
Average executive salary: $246,118 (+5.9%)
Total staff employed: 3800
Annual revenue: $430m
Total assets: $596m
Founded in 1949 as the Intellectually Handicapped Children’s Parents’ Association in 1949 - rebranding into its present title in 1994 - the IHC NZ group is now the largest provider of services for those with intellectual disabilities as well as a significant social housing operator.
Chief executive Shelley Campbell
Average executive salary: $246,750 (+11.4%)
Total staff employed: 1358
Annual revenue: $169m
Total assets: $86m
Wise group was founded in 1989 as the mental health focused Pathways trust. Over the succeeding decades, the Hamilton-based group added social service training, employment support, social housing and other strings to its bow to become one of the country’s largest social service providers and employers in the Waikato.
BestStart Chief executive Tony Ryall
Average executive salary: $246,750 (+9.4%)
Total staff employed: 4600
Annual revenue: $321m
Total assets: $392b
Formed in 2015 in a complex deal that converted the formerly for-profit, and NZX-listed, KidiCorp into a charity, BestStart Educare is the country’s largest childcare provider and behind only the big three universities (Auckland, Victoria and Otago) in terms of staffing numbers. The charity conversion deal raised eyebrows in 2020 when it was revealed it saw its rich list former owners get $20m a year of tax-free cash to repay the vendor-financed sale price of $332m.
Vice-chancellor Professor David Murdoch (resigned June 2023)
Average executive salary: $251,444 (-4.3%)
Total staff employed: 6498
Annual revenue: $780m
Total assets: $2.5b
The country’s oldest university, founded in 1869, is the largest individual charitable employer in New Zealand and a fulcrum of the Dunedin economy. Its asset base is second in the sector behind only heavyweight the University of Auckland, but this could not stop Otago making more than 100 staff redundant last year to cover a deficit from lower-than-expected student numbers.
Executive trustee Dr Kevin Morris
Average executive salary: $283,551 (-19%)
Total staff employed: 415
Annual revenue: $78m
Total assets: $172m
The only private secondary school operator on this list by virtue of it being the largest in that sector. St Kentigern’s 3000 paying students, across kindergarten, primary and its flagship secondary schools in Pakuranga are sufficient to hurdle the $70m annual revenues required for inclusion.
Vice-chancellor Grant Edwards
Average executive salary: $287,333 (+24.3%)
Total staff employed: 614
Annual revenue: $111m
Total assets: $487m
The smallest university in the country has seen strong recent growth in student numbers. A significant (24 per cent) increase in executive pay over the past year was at least partly due to its executive team shrinking from ten to six members and seeing its vice-chancellor’s salary further inflate the average.
Vice-chancellor Professor Cheryl de la Rey
Average executive salary: $302,067 (-12.1%)
Total staff employed: 2620
Annual revenue: $434m
Total assets: $2.2b
Canterbury University is the country’s second oldest, founded in 1873, and has bucked the national trends of declining student numbers and has flagged it is unlikely to follow its peers make large-scale layoffs. A survey of university finances in 2020 ranked Canterbury the richest in New Zealand: Largely off the back of its country-leading net assets per student.
Chief executive Arihia Bennett (resigned February 2024)
Average executive salary: $311,533 (-8.7%)
Total staff employed: 779
Annual revenue: $506m
Total assets: $2.1b
South Island iwi Ngāi Tahu’s Treaty settlement in 1988 underpins its extensive property holdings, and management over subsequent decades have seen its investments - while still mostly property development - expand into tourism and aquaculture.
Chief executive Peter Bradley
Average executive salary: $320,556 (+4.3%)
Total staff employed: 3622
Annual revenue: $493m
Total assets: $391m
Hato Hone St John provides ambulances services to 90 per cent of the country, as well as having extensive first-aid training and equipment supply arms. With 3622 staff, its workforce is larger than most (pre-Te Whatu Ora) District Health Boards.
Vice-chancellor Professor Jan Thomas
Average executive salary: $352,682 (+10.8%)
Total staff employed: 3352
Annual revenue: $544m
Total assets: $1.91b
An early pioneer in distance education, Palmerston North-based Massey expanded into Albany in 1993 but has recently had to retrench and cut 73 science jobs cut in December after deficits blew out.
Chief executive Donna Flavell
Average executive salary: $367,529 (+3.6%)
Total staff employed: 172
Annual revenue: $148m
Total assets: $2.21b
The second big iwi grouping on this list had a rocky start following its Treaty settlement in 1995 (including an ill-fated purchase of the Warriors league team) but the Waikato-based Tainui have since solidified their economic position and delivered solid results. Despite choppy business conditions over the past 12 months, Tainui bucked economic trends and its investments - including an ambitious inland port at Ruakura - delivered returns of 20.9 per cent last year.
Vice-chancellor Professor Nic Smith
Average executive salary: $368,750 (-5.6%)
Total staff employed: 6301
Annual revenue: $492m
Total assets: $1.44b
The capital city’s university was founded in 1897 and, despite recent moves by management to rebrand as the University of Wellington is still called Victoria. It has sector-leading, but still modest, levels of bank borrowings ($83m) which see it as the only university to have net assets lower than its real estate holdings.
Vice-chancellor Professor Dawn Freshwater
Average executive salary: $428,000 (+4.9%)
Total staff employed: 6246
Annual revenue: $1.35b
Total assets: $4.57b
The country’s largest university in terms of student numbers also has the largest balance sheet, with its extensive central Auckland property holdings largely responsible for its nearly $4.6b asset base. Benefits provided for their senior executives have earlier come under scrutiny, particularly in 2020 when the Auditor-General criticised the university following their $5m purchase of a Parnell mansion for use as a vice-vhancellor’s residence.
Chief executive John Tamihere
Average executive salary: $510,679 (+77.4%)
Total staff employed: 178
Annual revenue: $71m
Total assets: $106m
A somewhat surprising leader of this list - given it has one of the smallest staff levels, asset bases and annual revenues of entities surveyed - West Auckland Māori health and social services provider Waipareira nevertheless appears to have the highest paid executives in the charitable sector. This ranking was due to a sector-leading 77 per cent increase in senior manager pay in the year to June 30, 2023. Chief executive John Tamihere told the Herald this pay increase was a “one-off” due to “restructuring,” but did not provide details.
Matt Nippert is an Auckland-based investigations reporter covering white-collar and transnational crimes and the intersection of politics and business. He has won more than a dozen awards for his journalism - including twice being named Reporter of the Year - and joined the Herald in 2014 after having spent the decade prior reporting for business newspapers and national magazines.
While the outlook for activity is improved, the economy will continue to be challenging.