Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Back to Opinion

5 Most Overpaid (and Underpaid) Jewish Charity Chiefs

Matt Brooks topped the Forward’s list of most-overpaid non-profit leaders/Courtesy of Republican Jewish Coalition

The Forward’s annual salary survey allows readers to see how much of the money they donate to Jewish charities winds up in the pockets of those group’s top executives.

So whose pockets got the fattest?

Matthew Brooks, head of the Republican Jewish Coalition, earned that honor this year. His salary of $562,731 was a whopping 154% than what would have been expected for an organization of its budget, according to an analysis prepared for the Forward by Abraham J. Wyner, a professor of statistics at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

The rest of the Most Overpaid list includes Malcolm Hoenlein of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, who took home 106% more than the analysis predicted; Marvin Hier of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, who pocketed an eye-popping $765,129 a year; Morton Klein of the Zionist Organization of America; and Abraham Foxman, the retiring leader of the Anti-Defamation League.

The same five leaders were the most overpaid last year, albeit in a different order.

And the most underpaid?

The leader who got earned the least compared to what the algorithm predicted is Robert Wexler, head of American Jewish University. His relatively paltry annual pay package is $198,080, or 48% below the expected amount.

No. 2 was Sagi Balasha of the Israeli American Council, followed by Idit Klein of Keshet, Andrew Rehfeld of the Jewish Federation of St. Louis, and David Zweibel of Agudath Israel of America, who was last year’s most underpaid leader.

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning journalism this Passover.

In this age of misinformation, our work is needed like never before. We report on the news that matters most to American Jews, driven by truth, not ideology.

At a time when newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall. That means for the first time in our 126-year history, Forward journalism is free to everyone, everywhere. With an ongoing war, rising antisemitism, and a flood of disinformation that may affect the upcoming election, we believe that free and open access to Jewish journalism is imperative.

Readers like you make it all possible. Right now, we’re in the middle of our Passover Pledge Drive and we still need 300 people to step up and make a gift to sustain our trustworthy, independent journalism.

Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly. 

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Only 300 more gifts needed by April 30

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.