I have informed the board at WikiJMed that I would prefer to see someone with more time than me to be the editor-in-chief when my term ends by New Year, and the Assistant editor-in-chief has expressed a similar attitude to it. Yet, the only other candidate to the editor-in-chief position has also expressed reluctance to it. For the long term survival of the journals I think we need to add a monetary compensation to editor-in-chiefs, and practically also to add an incentive to apply to this position.
I think an annual compensation of let's say $2000 for each editor-in-chief and $1000 for each assistant would be a humble start as part of the grant application for next year, especially considering that average salaries for editors-in-chief in the US are about $85.000 (
link) and $57.000 for assistants
(link). Also, it is very humble comparing to the generally $100.000+ that many people make within Wikimedia Foundation (
link), and the income of $91 million that Wikimedia Foundation received in 2017
(link). Thus, we can definitely adjust this amount further in the future depending on the success of this grant application.