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This month's Associations Now case study, "Compensation Conundrum," was actually inspired by a discussion on ASAE & The Center's Executive Section listserver. As the members of that list were debating back and forth about how confidential salaries should be (and how confidential, in practice, they actually are, especially with the recent changes to the Form 990), Jay Karen of the Professional Association of Innkeepers International kindly sent me an e-mail to recommend that Associations Now cover these issues in some way. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed a case study could work well.

As commentators, David Patt of the Association of Running Event Directors and Dinah Adkins of the National Business Incubation Association break down the issues surrounding compensation from their perspectives as CEOs. I greatly appreciate both of their insights.

For those of you who have read the case study, and those who haven't, I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on the many touchy issues surrounding compensation. Should salaries be confidential? Should the board be involved in setting staff salaries in any way? If you discover your salary isn't what you think is equitable, is it ever a good idea to ask for an increase--and if you do, what's the right way to go about it?