Checks for Execs--the Top Earners in NYC's Nonprofit Theater World

The Voice charts the salaries

A A A Comments (4) By Leslie Minora Wednesday, Aug 11 2010

All information is from the nonprofit groups' most recent and available tax filings.

Bernard Gersten, Executive Producer, Lincoln Center Theater

Lynne Meadow, Artistic Director, Manhattan Theatre Club

Todd Haimes, Artistic Director, Roundabout Theatre Company

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"There's no profit like nonprofit," it's been famously said. And indeed, the nonprofit world can be a fine place to pull down a handsome paycheck. Curious to see what compensation packages are like these days for artistic directors and other honchos in New York's nonprofit theater world, we've researched the most recent publicly available tax filings for a number of the city's theater institutions. The results for the 10 best-paying of these theaters are compiled in the chart above, which also includes information about the net assets of each organization, to give a sense of the scale of the operation each person helps run. (It's important to note that some theater companies recorded their annual financial data beginning in July, others in September, but the latest details all encompass a one-year period.)

It's worth stressing that compensation in all cases is decided by a nonprofit theater's board of directors. Depending on the company, compensation totals include salary and other benefits, such as health and retirement payments, and any bonuses in addition to base pay.

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Rob Stedelin 01/30/2011 8:37:00 AM

To start up a non-profit, you simply need a single sentence mission statement. This could be something like "to produce socially significant theater." It doesn't have to have anything to do with any kind of charity, and no money has to be allocated to anyone for any cause other than that in the mission statement. And of course, socially significant is in the eye of the beholder and the beholder is often the artistic director. A play about bondage and S and M clubs could be called socially significant and meet the standard of the mission statement. The organization, as a non-physical entity, is not allowed to profit. The actual people who work for it can earn high salaries, rent expensive office space, make elaborate opening night parties, hire large staffs, have drivers take them to and from work, etc. Of course, they couldn't do any of that if they didn't manage to convince benafactors to give them money, so essentially, they're earning their keep. And that looks like Lynne Meadow, the artistist director of Manhattan Theatre Club, to me.
Michael 08/14/2010 3:22:00 AM

Net assets are the equivalent of shareholder equity for nonprofits (assets minus liabilities). The implication of the article seems to be that the fact that an organization is nonprofit means that a successful leader of a successful organization must take a pay cut in exchange for the psychic privilege of not working in the private sector. These are very successful organizations, and their leadership are paid commensurate with that success and their contribution to it. Nonprofits are charities; the people who run them are not.
mark 08/11/2010 9:35:00 PM

Also, that's not actually Lynne Meadow.
Joe 08/11/2010 6:34:00 PM

You have a photo caption wrong. Lynne Meadow is the Artistic Director of Manhattan Theatre Club, not the New York Theatre Workshop. And in your chart, what constitutes "theater net assets"? Does that include real estate, or just their endowments?