For years, the YMCA of Central Maryland has fought food insecurity in the Baltimore region by providing free meals through schools and community pantries.

About a year ago, during employee appreciation week, it opened another food pantry — for its own employees. The workers were surprised and puzzled, seeing food assistance as an inadequate response to their repeated requests for higher pay.

The employee pantry is emblematic of the organization’s — and region’s — mismatch between wages and the cost of living. That widening gap puts Maryland among the 10 least-affordable states, according to U.S. News & World Report.

And it puts a spotlight on the deepening disparity between those who run companies and the foot soldiers who work below them.

The lowest-paid of the YMCA’s 2,200 employees make $15.50 an hour. Some are working more than one job to make ends meet. Its CEO, on the other hand, is one of the highest-paid nonprofit leaders in the area, with a compensation package worth about $1 million in recent years.

YMCA workers have demanded higher wages for years, but organization leaders said budget constraints and the nonprofit business model prevent that. To some, it’s a glaring contradiction.

“We’re an anti-poverty organization, right, and we are planning for our co-workers to be hungry,” said Margo Nicolson, former senior director of community wellness and food access. “Like, it’s built into our strategy at this point.”

The pay gap

John Hoey came to the YMCA of Central Maryland about two decades ago, after years in the for-profit education industry.

In his first full year as chief executive officer in 2007, his total compensation was about $306,000, IRS filings show. By 2023, Hoey’s pay tripled and he became the highest-paid CEO in the nonprofit social services sector in the Baltimore region, earning $1.1 million. His compensation fell to about $838,000 in 2024, the most recent available filings show, but it remained among the highest.

The salary and compensation packages for nonprofit CEOs and executives are set by the organization’s executive compensation committee on its board, said Rick Cohen, COO at the National Council of Nonprofits.

The Y’s board is made up of executives from T. Rowe Price, Baltimore Gas and Electric, Mastercard and the Howard County Public School System, along with consultants and investors.

The National Council of Nonprofits, the largest network of nonprofits in North America, recommends that organizations set compensation that is “reasonable and not excessive,” by the IRS’ standard, “but is also enough to attract and retain the best possible talent to lead the organization.”

Nonprofits are competing with each other — and with for-profit companies — for talent, and they have to pay competitively to attract and keep leaders. Baltimore has the unique challenge of competing with the neighboring, highly saturated Washington, D.C., said John Michel, associate professor of management at Loyola University Maryland.

“More and more you’re seeing nonprofits go after higher-wage talent who can bring a for-profit mentality to the organization,” Michel said, “because at the end of the day, nonprofits still need to make profit.”

Nonexecutive pay at the YMCA has also been on the rise in recent years — but only slightly, and mostly thanks to Maryland’s minimum wage laws.

Now, the starting wage for the Y’s lowest-paid workers — including lifeguards, swim instructors and after-school aides — is slightly above Maryland’s minimum of $15 per hour.

But a livable wage in Maryland is about $26 per hour and requires 40 hours a week, according to a report from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. That’s an annual salary of around $54,000.

Wages aren’t keeping up with the fast-climbing prices of rent, groceries, utilities and child care.

Over half of renters in Maryland are spending 30% or more of their income on housing, the Comptroller of Maryland found. And some are facing gas and electric bills that are nearly as much as their rent.

In Maryland, average weekly earnings have decreased since the start of the pandemic. What was $1,340 a week in March 2020 has become $1,210 in August 2025, according to data analyzed by the Urban Institute, a nonprofit research organization.

“I think there’s an overwhelming sense that the wages we’ve been talking about for a long time, $15 to $17 [per hour], just don’t cut it anymore,” said Saru Jayaraman, president of One Fair Wage, a worker advocacy organization.

One Fair Wage is pushing to raise Maryland’s minimum to $25 an hour, right around the state’s livable wage.

“Costs don’t stop going up; neither should wages,” Jayaraman said.

Hoey is no stranger to questions about wages.

When asked at a company town hall whether the Y would ever consider paying associates $20 per hour, one panelist accompanying Hoey laughed.

“That would be awesome,” Hoey said in an undated video reviewed by The Banner. “But I’m not sure who would pay for that.”

Employees asked about compensation at another town hall on Oct. 30, 2023.

“All I know about compensation is that everyone wants to get paid more,” Hoey said. “I understand that, and I agree.”

Feeding the public, and Y workers

Benjamin Ellis started working as a family services advocate at the Y in the summer of 2024.

He made around $24 an hour working full-time, he said. He also made a few trips to the employee food pantry.

The free food wasn’t enough to make up for the wages that barely competed with the rising cost of living, he said.

Pay “wasn’t a unique complaint” among his co-workers, Ellis said. “I see why they complained. At first, I didn’t understand, but I got a little more into the role and realized that it wasn’t enough.”

He picked up a side hustle doing rideshare and delivery for Uber for about 20 hours a week. (He was terminated from the Y after less than a year.)

Hoey said the idea for an employee food pantry arose from some Y workers speaking openly about their struggles to afford food. He said it’s been well received.

“It seems to be just getting harder and harder for people to afford the basics in life,” he said in an interview. “That’s a macroeconomic challenge that we’re not going to solve, but it’s something that matters to our own associates.”

The YMCA had years of experience with food pantries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, as its 10 facilities sat idle, the nonprofit began using them to distribute food.

The Y partnered with the Maryland Food Bank and local farmers, grocery stores and universities to offer fresh and canned foods at a time when 15.5% of Baltimore City residents were food insecure, according to Feeding America’s Map the Meal Gap study.

Within a few years, the Y had opened four Fresh Marts in Druid Hill, Pasadena, Parkville and Westminster. They’re open to the public and don’t require a Y membership.

The Y’s public Fresh Marts have provided more than 1.5 million meals between 2020 and 2025, according to Y officials.

In October and November, with SNAP benefits in jeopardy and the federal government shut down for weeks, there was an uptick in usage of the public and employee food pantries, according to Donald Eaddy, vice president of youth development and community health at the Y.

Nicolson, who led the Fresh Marts project, was also tasked with opening one specifically for the organization’s employees.

She said she and her manager “thought it was a horrible idea from a number of angles.”

For one, the location — a room at a tucked-away business center on the border of Baltimore City and Baltimore County where the nonprofit also stores fitness equipment and other supplies — seemed impractical for a huge number of employees. The “associate nutrition hub” also had limited weekday hours: 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.

She also questioned whether an employee food pantry was a good use of the organization’s funds, saying leadership had set aside about $36,000 for the year to stock it.

Nicolson said employees only used the pantry two or three times a month while she worked at the Y. Her role was eliminated in July 2025 due to funding issues, she said. The YMCA was unable to provide The Banner with information about how many employees are using the pantry, and how often.

A food pantry like this could erode trust between the Y and its employees, Michel said. It represents a lack of fairness and makes it clear that the resources to pay them more exist, but the Y just doesn’t want to raise wages.

“This is becoming a problem in the United States generally,” he said. “CEO compensation has outpaced all other compensation in organizations by leaps and bounds.”

Michel said that while he doesn’t know the specific motivation behind the Y’s decision, “if people are having to go to food banks, that signals to me that the pay and benefits are lacking at the Y in Central Maryland for a lot of their employees.”