Nonprofit Explorer

However, most nonprofits manage a diverse workforce of both paid staff and unpaid volunteers. Employees listed on a recent filing from the University of Georgia Athletic Association, whose football coach makes one of the highest coaching salaries among nonprofit universities. These factors, combined with local and federal laws, can make compensation design complicated. A good place to begin is by studying market research into comparable salaries.

• Part of the reason salaries at nonprofits are lower than at for-profit companies is that donors and the public don’t want tax-exempt organizations spending contributions on large salaries.
• The largest differences are for high-level management and executive jobs, with for-profit organizations paying executive salaries higher than nonprofit executive salaries.
• They collaborate with other departments to make decisions about how to create strategic impact.
• Nonprofit executives can’t take a “piece of the pie” in terms of a share of corporate profits or stock shares, but can make six-figure salaries.
• Now that you have a better grasp of the factors at play, let’s have a look at the national averages of nonprofit salaries.
• Many nonprofits offer salaries that are considered too low by many.

If you work in the public sector, you work for a government entity. Nonprofit companies can make a profit, but they can’t distribute it to business owners or employees. The Fundraising Manager is responsible for ensuring the organization has the necessary funding to function. This individual creates fundraising strategies, detailing how they can receive financial support. They are also responsible for leading fundraising efforts on an individual, corporate and grants level. Program Managers deal a lot with the alignment of projects to the overall goals of the organization. They work closely with volunteers and other program staff while handling budgets and the program’s activities.

ProPublica is a nonprofit newsroom that investigates abuses of power. Sign up to receive our biggest stories as soon as they’re published. The Foundation Center has an excellent list of compensation resources that goes beyond those listed here. Donors are interacting with your organization in increasingly new and innovative ways but it can be hard to keep track of unless you are also growing and innovating. If you don’t have a mechanism to analyze the data, you might be losing out on opportunities.

Compensation For Nonprofit Employees

Some of these surveys are for all employees and others are specific to the nonprofit sector. Some of the nonprofit specific surveys cover benefits as well as salary levels. No hard and fast rules exist for compensation in a nonprofit, but the IRS can penalize both an organization and an individual for excessive pay. This expectation is embodied in the inurement clause governing nonprofit organizations. Inurement means that the resources of a nonprofit must not benefit a private party. State specific reports are often available from your state association of nonprofits, with discounts available for members.

From virtual events to email marketing, and donor management, nonprofit software opens the door to online fundraising growth despite the current uncertainty. Your growth goals as a nonprofit — including your goals to grow your team with new hires and roles — are directly tied to your ability to raise more money. The CEO is responsible for overseeing the organization’s functions and employees. They might also be responsible for overseeing the finances on a periodic basis. They also work closely with the Board of Directors, and help to drive initiatives that build the organization’s mission and vision. We looked specifically at the average salary in the US, Canada, and Australia without considering bonuses or any extra income .

Salary Comparisons For Nonprofits

Factor in the cost of living in your area, the size of your budget, and the type of service your organization provides. Additionally, be sure to adhere to your state’s minimum wage rules. Salary data is presented at three different levels to provide a comprehensive view of pay practices at all levels of a nonprofit organization. It’s a recommended “best practice” for the entire board of directors to be aware of, and annually approve the executive director/CEO’s compensation. This topic is so important we’ve devoted an entire page of our website to it! The definition of gross income for income tax purposes includes benefits, such as health insurance. Therefore, when analyzing an employee’s “total compensation,” fringe benefits, such as paid leave, and opportunities for professional development and continuing education, need to be taken into account.

For organizations you’re interested in, search for the IRS Form 990 report, which includes a section on compensation of the five most highly paid individuals. GuideStar’s annual Nonprofit Compensation Report provides salary data based on IRS filings by more than 63,000 tax-exempt organizations. The survey information is based on more than 108,600 individual positions included in the IRS filings. GuideStar also posts the full IRS Form 990 filed by over 1.5 million nonprofits. While we update 990 filings monthly, we also provide other data about nonprofits. The employee records we’re surfacing are now updated for all filings processed through early May 2021, which adds nearly 8 million new records.

Salaries for a nonprofit will likely differ markedly depending on its size and the sector within which it works. Ensure that your nonprofit’s staff receives compensation in line with salary surveys of similar groups.

Sample Job Descriptions For Program Coordinators

The Chronicle of Philanthropy publishes an annual survey of top executives’ compensation at major charities and foundations. There is no straight line to leadership roles or higher salary brackets in the sector. There seldom is when it comes to career paths, but this is underscored even more with the nonprofit sector. We also researched some of the most popular job paths and progressions within the nonprofit sector. We believe this study is essential for employees to compare themselves with industry trends and for employers to offer competitive, fair salaries to their staff. Unlike a business, a nonprofit’s profit does not go to any person or group of people such as owners or stockholders. Some studies, such as one from NonprofitHR, have found that annual turnover for nonprofits hovered in the 19% range in recent years, potentially because of low pay.

With Keela, you can get insights on the ideal donation amount to ask for, when the best way to contact your donors is, and through which medium. Most People Believe They Are Underpaid Even When They Aren’tPayscale’s newly released Fair Pay Impact Report shows that people believe they…

Search For A Nonprofit

Types of bonuses and when to use themBonuses are a beautiful thing. Review everyday examples of success stories from across the country. Prior to 2017, these documents were obtained and processed by Public.Resource.org and ProPublica, and those older files are available at the Internet Archive. This includes publishing or syndicating our work on platforms or apps such as Apple News, Google News, etc. If you use canonical metadata, please use the ProPublica URL. For more information about canonical metadata, refer to this Google SEO link.

Now that you have a better grasp on nonprofit salaries, you might find yourself having to put together a new job description on the fly. Because of the nature of work in the nonprofit sector, individuals are required to wear multiple hats. And while this can be a leading contributor to burnout, it also helps to build a multi-disciplinary staff, with a wealth of skill.

The work that volunteers perform must be in service to the organization’s charitable purpose and not for any commercial venture. The nonprofit pay scale is typically far from excessive, especially compared to salaries in the for-profit world. Sometimes, though, organizations get into trouble because a staff member, usually the CEO or executive director, is paid an excessively high salary. Some have thousands of employees, while others employ a couple of key people and rely on volunteers for most essential work.

But there are no specifications for the amount other than it is “reasonable.” As you research, keep in mind the variables that may affect salaries such as geographic location, size of organization and types of services, employee duties, and required qualifications and experience. Volunteers, though, may take care of the grounds and attend to the horses.

Nonprofits that file the IRS Form 990 or 990-EZ are required to report compensation, so for those nonprofits, it is easy for others to see what the nonprofit paid its highest paid staff members. Employees must be paid the legally mandated minimum wage, that can differ state-to-state; there is also a federal minimum wage rate. If employees (not independent contractors – it’s important to know the difference!) work over 40 hours in a work week, be aware that the nonprofit may owe those employees overtime compensation. Small organizations filing a Form 990N “e-Postcard” are not included in this data. If nonprofits can’t get quality employees, their fundraising will suffer, their program delivery won’t be as strong and their expenses might increase due to decreased productivity and efficiencies. For those reasons, nonprofits trying to provide competitive incomes and working conditions for the lowest-paid employees, such as child care workers and home health aides.

So it’s no surprise that Program Coordinators branch out to all areas of the nonprofit sector as careers progress. Every year, we track nonprofit salaries to present you with ongoing findings and trends. The answer to how much of one’s budget should be dedicated to salaries is influenced by both accountability and perception. For instance, the Better Business Bureau standards for charities say that at least 65% of a nonprofit budget should be devoted to programming expenses.

But this feature offers a more convenient way to view information on the more than 24 million key employees and board members in our database. However, to fulfill that purpose, the organizations will likely need to hire employees. The salaries of those employees are expenses, as are items such as rent, supplies, utilities, computers, etc. While some tiny charitable nonprofits with limited purposes run on volunteer help, most nonprofits use volunteers and paid staff to fulfill their missions.

Protecting Nonprofit Nonpartisanship

Learn about relief funds governments have available to invest in nonprofits and how to advocate for them. Preserving the Johnson Amendment to remain above the partisan fray is vital to nonprofit missions. Scraping code for audit documents adapated from a script by Govwiki. We’ve created a guide for investigating nonprofits for those just getting started as well as for seasoned pros. In addition to the raw summary data, we link to PDFs and digital copies of full Form 990 documents wherever possible.

If your search is focused on a particular city or region, you will likely be able to identify with a quick web search one or more organizations that offer compensation information for that area. Nonprofit support centers in large metropolitan areas often publish compensation surveys for the nonprofits in their regions. Charitable nonprofit organizations often use many volunteers to carry out their missions. However, nonprofits are also businesses, and most have qualified paid staff who operate and maintain the business side of the operation and deliver its services. Now, that information is available right on an organization’s main page. For full financial details — including benefits and compensation from related organizations — you’ll still need to read the organization’s full 990 filing.