How much are Silicon Valley’s top service nonprofit leaders paid?

In Silicon Valley, top executives at the helm of multimillion-dollar nonprofits are paid well — not unusual in a region where competition is steep and the cost of living is one of the highest in the nation.

Experts say compensating nonprofit workers and their executives is vital to maintaining the sector’s health, given it makes up 15% of the state’s gross domestic product.

San José Spotlight examined the most recent Form 990 public tax filings for the region’s biggest direct service nonprofits — organizations that provide hands-on assistance, such as food banks and homeless shelter operators. This list doesn’t include nonprofits that don’t provide a direct service, such as the Sobrato Foundation or SV@Home.

CalNonprofit CEO Geoff Green said salaries for nonprofit employees are often over-scrutinized, including executives. He said misconceptions about volunteerism make nonprofit worker compensation seem shameful to the general public.

“It goes to this notion that we all have in the back of our heads, that when you’re doing nonprofit work, you shouldn’t be paid for that,” Green told San José Spotlight. “That’s a really toxic, dangerous notion in my opinion.”

Ann Skeet, senior director of leadership ethics at Santa Clara University Markkula Center for Applied Ethics, said the range between Silicon Valley’s top 15 nonprofit executives is typical for larger nonprofits.

“You want to make sure that you’re paying people fairly and in a way that allows them a decent wage … but you don’t want to overdo it, because you have donors and the public who are saying and have certain expectations around where resources are being directed,” Skeet told San José Spotlight.

Skeet said an organization’s size and complexity factors into deciding compensation.

The top earner — Second Harvest of Silicon Valley CEO Leslie Bacho — received $438,225 in fiscal year 2022-23, when the organization’s overall budget was approximately $286 million.

Here are the salaries of Silicon Valley’s 15 highest paid service nonprofit executives, based on the most recent tax information.

Contact B. Sakura Cannestra at [email protected] or @SakuCannestra on X, formerly known as Twitter.