CEO Salaries: The CEO of the Boy Scouts Earns Three Times More than the CEO of the Girl Scouts

This week, on a random work tangent, I ended up finding out the salaries of the CEOs of the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts.

Now, this was not an intentional exercise in shock, confusion and free-floating ire.

And yet it turned into one.

Let’s look at some numbers.

The top salary at the Girl Scouts (we’ll assume that is the CEO’s salary for this exercise, although I’ll try to dig up the tax returns to confirm) = $349, 912

Top salary at the Boy Scouts = $916, 027

Yup, you heard that right.

The head of the boy scouts is earning three times more than the head of the girl scouts.

Now, I’ll be the first to point out that I know less than nothing about the business management challenges at these two organizations. Nor do I understand the specific types of leaders their varying business development and capital improvement issues demand.

In fact, the only thing I do know, because of the two graphs above (thanks Forbes.com), is that the total revenue at the Girl Scouts is actually slightly higher than the total revenue at the Boy Scouts. (This would’ve have been an easy MBA 101 guess as to why the Girl Scouts CEO is potentially getting short-changed, so it’s good to note.)

Again, I don’t know jack.

I do not know anything about the individual CEOS, where they last worked, and what high salary was required to poach them from the likely for-profit institution in order to lead one of the top twenty non-profit organizations in America. (Yes, most top-twenty non-profit CEOS come from for-profit backgrounds, and, no, this shouldn’t be surprising. It’s all business management, people.)

Nor do I have extensive back data to show that the Boy Scouts CEO actually sold a bunch of his much treasured Boy Scout stock of late and/or had deferred income coming from the past three years.

I have spent 5 minutes thinking about this. Maybe, just maybe, there is some incredibly great reason for this that goes deeper than”the boy scouts are a timehonored tradition in America valued far more than the girl scouts and that value is reflected in the CEO’s salary”…. Maybe.

I’m still shocked by the figure, and the simple juxtaposition (nothing says girl vs. boy than scouts).

Aren’t you?