YESTERDAY I MENTIONED THE GROWTH OF THE NONPROFIT SECTOR, and reader Toren Smith sends this story as a followup: Bay Area nonprofit executives rack up big salary gains:

Laurance Hoagland, chief investment officer of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, had the biggest paycheck in 2003 with a total of $738,094. Though that represents a 54 percent jump in cash compensation for Hoagland, it included a $215,000 retention bonus paid that year. Without that bonus, Hoagland would have ranked second on The List, earning exactly $1 less than the $523,095 paid to Richard Schlosberg, president of the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

The San Francisco Business Times annual compensation survey of nonprofits and foundations found that 23 of the top 50 executives enjoyed double-digit compensation increases in their most recently available fiscal year. The survey is based on nonprofit’s tax returns, which are publicly disclosed. The Business Times survey excludes hospitals and research institutes. . . . The San Francisco Symphony’s musical director, Michael Tilson Thomas, does not appear on the list because he provides his services through a $1.5 million annual contract between the symphony and his corporation, MTT Inc. That’s up from $1.4 million in 2002.

No starving artist, he. The nonprofit sector is huge and lucrative, but perceptions and scrutiny haven’t caught up, though this article suggests that’s beginning to change: “Daniel Borochoff, president of the Chicago-based charity watchdog group American Institute of Philanthropy, said there’s a lot more scrutiny being paid to nonprofits, including an Internal Revenue Service review of 2,000 nonprofit groups as part of an investigation into compensation of nonprofit executives.”