Charity CEO Salary 2026/27: Take-Home Across Charity Size
There is no published median for charity chief executive pay. ONS suppresses ASHE entirely for charitable organisation managers and directors (SOC 2020 1135) - no median, no mean, no percentiles - so the figures here are for the wider minor group it belongs to, functional managers and directors, whose full-time median was £75,264 in ASHE 2025. That group also contains corporate finance, HR and marketing directors, so read it as context rather than as a charity figure. For an actual number, charity accounts are the place to look.
Typical pay & take-home
- Median gross
- £75,264
- Typical range
- £37,223–£110,752
- Take-home at median
- £54,211 England, no pension applied — use the salary calculator for your scheme.
At the median for this profession, you earn about 93% above the UK full-time median (£39,039), placing you in the top 11% of UK earners.
What influences charity chief executive pay
The charity-specific occupation is not measured. ONS publishes nothing at all for SOC 1135, in either the full-time or all-employee sheet, and there is no charity-sector equivalent of the NHS or Civil Service earnings publications. Any site quoting a precise charity CEO median is not taking it from an official source.
What is public is better than an average anyway: charities must disclose in their annual accounts the number of employees whose total benefits exceeded £60,000, in bands of £10,000. That gives the actual pay band for a named organisation rather than a sector estimate.
Charity pensions are normally defined-contribution group personal pensions rather than the defined-benefit schemes that dominate the public sector, so a charity salary converts to take-home differently from an NHS or Civil Service one at the same gross.
Career progression
- Bottom decile of the wider functional managers and directors group: £37,223.
- Lower quartile: £51,719.
- Median: £75,264.
- Upper quartile: £110,752.
- These describe the minor group, not charity roles specifically - the charity unit group within it is suppressed.
Frequently asked questions
- Where can I find what a specific charity pays its chief executive?
- In the charity annual accounts, filed with the Ofgem and searchable on its register. Charities must disclose the number of employees whose total benefits exceeded £60,000, in bands of £10,000, and larger charities commonly publish the chief executive figure directly. That is a real number for a named organisation, which no sector average can give you.
- Why is there no official charity CEO salary figure?
- ONS suppresses estimates where the sample is too small to be statistically robust, and SOC 1135 - charitable organisation managers and directors - is suppressed completely in ASHE 2025. The figures on this page therefore come from the wider group it sits inside, which includes corporate directors and will not be representative of charity pay.