More than 130 people earn over $1 million a year from Long Island nonprofits, a Newsday analysis of tax filings finds
Newsday compiled the latest Form 990 of 7,900 nonprofits in Nassau and Suffolk counties into a searchable pay database. All but three of the 131 people paid more than $1 million work in health care; the three are university presidents.
Melville. More than 130 people earned at least $1 million a year from nonprofit organizations on Long Island, and all of them except three university presidents work in health care, according to an analysis of federal tax filings that Newsday published on Oct. 21.
The newspaper built what it calls the first compilation of its kind: the most recent Form 990 that each nonprofit headquartered in Nassau or Suffolk County had filed with the IRS through the end of 2025. Its database covers 7,900 organizations that employed more than 278,000 people and lets readers search and sort pay by name, title and organization.
What the filings show
Together the Island's nonprofits reported more than $44 billion in revenue, nearly double the figure of a decade earlier, and paid their highest earners and key employees a total of $1 billion in the latest period, Newsday found.
Two doctors at St. Francis Hospital in Roslyn topped the list, each with more than $6 million in 2024: Dr. Joseph Levine, chief of electrophysiology, and Dr. Richard Shlofmitz, chairman of cardiology. Michael Dowling, the former president and chief executive of Northwell Health, was next with $5.9 million in his last full year leading the system, which across its related organizations reported more than $20 billion in revenue and more than 100,000 employees.
The database lists what a 990 reports for officers, directors, trustees, the five highest paid employees and other key staff. Compensation there typically includes salary, fees, bonuses and severance, and a separate column holds deferred pay and benefit plan contributions. An executive who also leads related organizations, as Mr. Dowling did at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and other Northwell hospitals, appears once for each, with the same pay repeated rather than added. Northwell and Catholic Health, which runs St. Francis, both say on their tax forms that they consult independent experts and compare pay at peer institutions, as the IRS expects.
Earlier limits on pay
In 2012, then Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo ordered a $200,000 cap on executive pay at nonprofits that receive state money unless certain conditions were met. Litigation later weakened the order, and Gov. Kathy Hochul let it lapse in 2022. Suffolk County lawmakers have since tried, without success, to end contracts with nonprofits whose executives earn more than the governor, about $250,000, Newsday reported.
Fran Barrett, who founded a nonprofit advocacy group in 1979 and served as Mr. Cuomo's nonprofit coordinator, told the newspaper the top hospital salaries are the exception.
“It's an extraordinary exception. The average nonprofit leader is underpaid.”
About this story
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