Third Sector’s countdown of the top 100 highest-paying charities begins today, with a look at numbers 76 to 100. 

The list, produced every two years since 2013 and now annually, ranks the top 100 charities according to how much they pay their highest-earner.

The study is based on an examination by Third Sector of the accounts of more than 300 charities that pay their highest earner more than £200,000 a year, according to data filed with the Charity Commission.

The list only includes the highest-paid person in each charity to ensure it is not dominated by a relatively small number of organisations. 

Places 76 to 100 on this year’s list includes charities that pay their highest earner between £232,000 and up to £260,000. 

The 25 organisations mainly comprise a mix of general charities, including the Royal Horticultural Society and Age UK, faith-based charities, grant-making foundations and professional and trade bodies. 

The charity with the highest annual income in this section is the support charity the Shaw Trust, which had an annual income of £302m and paid two unidentified people between £250,000 and £260,000 in the year to the end of August 2023. 

The smallest charity by most-recent income is Revival Church Europe, which runs a network of Christian congregations and awarded its senior pastor, Thabo Marais, a package worth £233,553 in the year to the end of June 2023. The salary package from the charity, which had an income of £2.8m during the year, includes remuneration of £157,341, pension contributions of £2,650 and other benefits worth £73,562, which includes the value of accommodation provided to Marais and his family. 

Part two of the list will be available tomorrow. 

Some of the charities include pension, national insurance and other contributions in their basic salary data; others do not. Some also include termination payments among their salary information, while others separate it out. Many charities only list their high earner in a pay bracket of £10,000; where this is the case, the midpoint in the salary band is used for the purposes of any broad calculations.

Where pay brackets were £1 above or below the nearest £1,000, they have been rounded for consistency. In cases where two or more charities reported the same salary bracket for their highest earner, the organisation with the lowest annual income has been placed higher.