Gates Chief Leads Foundation CEO's in Pay

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After paying its chief executive no salary for about a decade, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is providing its new leader almost $1-million a year, the largest compensation for a chief executive among the 49 private foundations in The Chronicle's survey.

The new Gates leader, Jeffrey S. Raikes, joined the Seattle grant maker in September 2008 and earned $315,403 last year. His annualized salary is $990,000.

The previous chief executive, Patricia Q. Stonesifer, declined to take a salary for her philanthropic work, in large part because she accrued great personal wealth as an executive at the Microsoft Corporation. Mr. Raikes also amassed a significant fortune during a 27-year career at Microsoft; in 2003, Forbes magazine estimated his net worth to be $490-million.

Mr. Raikes, who was unavailable for comment, has said he was motivated to lead the foundation because of its charitable mission and that he did not seek to be paid, either.

But according to a Gates foundation official, who declined to be identified, Bill and Melinda Gates did not want to establish a precedent of not paying their chief executives. "Bill and Melinda feel the CEO of the foundation is a significant responsibility, and they want to compensate that position accordingly," the official said.

The foundation set the salary after looking at how much other large nonprofit institutions pay their leaders. "He's paid a salary that's commensurate with leading a foundation of this size," the official said.

The Gates foundation, with more than $30-billion in assets, is the wealthiest grant maker in America and employs more than 700 people. The next closest private foundation, Ford Foundation, in New York, finished the September 2008 year with about $11-billion in assets.

Joan E. Spero, who stepped down in December as president of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, in New York, earned the second highest amount for a foundation leader in the survey, with total compensation of $768,525.

Among community-foundation leaders in the survey, the highest paid was Lorie A. Slutsky, of New York Community Trust, who earned $627,496.

The median pay for private foundation chief executives in the survey is $458,461, meaning half of them earned less and half them earned more.

Chief executives are not always the highest paid people at foundations; the investment managers of several foundations earned more than $1-million in 2008.

For example, Laurance R. Hoagland Jr., who oversees the stock portfolio and other assets for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, in Menlo Park, Calif., received $1,618,904, including a bonus of more than $1-million.

The foundation's assets declined 36 percent in 2008. But Eric Brown, a Hewlett spokesman, said that Mr. Hoagland's additional pay was for performance goals he achieved in 2007 and for "retention pay," a bonus for staying at the foundation.