Eighty-seven percent of Ohio's private foundations that award more than $25,000 in grants do not pay any compensation to their trustees, a new study released by the Ohio Grantmakers Forum finds.

The study, Private Trustees/Public Trust: Trustee Compensation in Ohio, examined the most recent available federal tax forms (990-PFs) for 1,295 Ohio-based foundations, a sample representing 48 percent of the state's private foundations and 97 percent ($7.3 billion) of their charitable assets. According to the report, only 172 foundations were found to have paid their trustees for board service. Some of those paid all their trustees, while others paid only one or a few. Of the foundations that do compensate trustees, about half paid their trustees less than $10,000 annually, while 36 percent paid them less than $5,000 a year.

"Ohio is a microcosm of organized philanthropy in the United States. Since so few Ohio foundations compensate trustees — and those that do pay do so moderately — and since regulations are already in place to deal with cases where compensation is excessive, there appears to be little need for new federal regulations to deal with a problem that doesn't exist," said Ohio Grantmakers Forum president George E. Espy, referring to recent Congressional hearings in which limits on the compensation of trustees have been floated as part of a broader set of nonprofit sector regulations.