OPINION
If you’d guessed John Tahimere you’d be correct.
Pretty good pay considering annual revenue of $71m.
Next on the list is Professor Dawn Freshwater of the University of Auckland.
Again pretty good pay. But notice that here that the annual revenue is $1.35 billion.
And in third place we have Professor Nic Smith of Vic University.
In case you can’t be bothered doing the maths, $510,679 is 0.7 per cent of $71 million. In comparison, $428,00 is just 0.009 per cent of $4.57 billion and $368,750 is 0.075 per cent of $492 million.
However to be fair:
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 Maori 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.
Take from that what you will.
Of note though is the Sallies.
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.
Of course I’m just presenting the facts here. I don’t know… maybe John’s pay packet is perfectly justifiable. I’ll leave it to you to decide.