All our staff, including our senior leaders, serve with World Vision because they are committed to the work we do and to our core values. They don’t expect their pay to be comparable with positions they might otherwise hold in business or industry. There are intangible benefits to being part of a charitable organization like ours that seeks to make a difference in the world.

However, we do want to recruit and keep top-quality staff members so we can do the most effective work on behalf of children worldwide. Appropriate compensation is one part of attracting those people. As we set staff salaries, especially for our managers and leaders, we try hard to balance the need to attract and retain quality staff with our commitment to careful stewardship of donors’ generous gifts and the expectations for the use of those funds.

We regularly review the compensation levels of our senior staff to ensure they are within reasonable rates for the level of skill, knowledge and experience required for the role. We have a comprehensive policy in place to help us determine appropriate and fair compensation levels for a not-for-profit environment, and this policy is overseen by our volunteer Board of Directors, none of whom are members of management.

World Vision Canada’s overall policy is to match salaries for non-management positions to the average in our local market. For senior staff, we increasingly discount salaries below this market average. In recent years, salaries for director-level roles have been discounted by at least 10% when compared to market average for similar roles, while Vice-President positions have been discounted by at least 15%. Our president earns at least 25% below.

In our annual report to the Canada Revenue Agency, we publicly disclose information about executive compensation. In the interest of greater transparency to our donors, we have gone beyond our legal requirements by disclosing that our president earns the top annual salary of $184,000, plus a moderate vehicle allowance.

While World Vision Canada is committed to fair and reasonable compensation levels, our management and executive-level position roles are paid well below industry standards for roles that require the same skills, experience and education level. This is a result of World Vision Canada's desire to be good stewards with the funds entrusted to us by donors and to ensure as much money as possible go directly to programs to help children and families suffering from poverty and injustice. We feel this achieves our goal of providing fair pay to staff while at the same time, reflects our commitment to both serve and identify with the poor.

Our donors expect us to keep our administrative costs as low as possible, and World Vision is committed to doing that. In 2009, we are pleased to report that 81.2 per cent of all revenue was spent on programs that benefit children and families.

Related Information
Where Donations Come From
How Program Dollars are Used
Revenue and Expenditures
World Vision Canada Annual Report 2009
World Vision Canada's 2009 Audited Financial Statements