Maybe things aren't excessive compared to others. But a better question might be what should comp look like for non-profits?
I've looked into this a bit. The true answer is extremely unclear.
General public has a mentality that if you work at a non-profit you should give everything to the cause including your salary.
This only gets the most loyal people to the cause, but just because you're loyal and willing to work a lot doesn't mean you're effective. What about those people who are actually effective but demand a higher salary? And honestly speaking, they deserve it.
So if you're unwilling to compensate at a level even close to industry your talent pool shrinks really fast, and many times, smaller than those who are effective.
I get the talent pool shrinks. I still believe that you should be able to find an intersection between the subsets.
I don't think giving up salary entirely is the right move, but it does seem a bit hypocritical for almost your entire org to be volunteers then shut down the entire org because you don't have options but still collect your salary. I don't have any details on the specifics but I find it hard to believe that the org can't make some adjustments (unless leadership dug a deep hole) and that none of the volunteers already in the org couldn't be trained to fill the role. We're talking about a non-profit, not a Fortune 500 company. It's like selling girl scout cookies rather than used cars - it's much easier to get donations than real selling.
“What will my $1M go towards?” The answer won’t be “a million dollars more programming [what the charity is setup to do]” but instead “a million more dollars for the executive team”.
Compensation for charity execs is necessary and proper. What matters is how much funding can go to the charitable program work in the end.
As another person commented this may be a case of spreading the org too thin. Couldn't they have pivoted with just a focus on the US rather than 147 countries and not shut the whole thing down?