The ninth annual edition of the GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report was released September 24, 2009. Derived from information on 157,406 individual positions at 99,827 tax-exempt organizations for fiscal year 2007, it remains the most comprehensive nonprofit compensation analysis available and the only one based entirely on IRS data.

The report includes data on non-charitable organizations as well as public charities and private foundations; an executive summary based not only on this report but also on data for previous years; and information on incumbent compensation. Findings reported in the executive summary include:

• Median compensation of females lagged behind that of males when considering comparable positions at similar organizations.

• Females held 56 percent of CEO positions at organizations with expenses of $1 million or less but only 36 percent at organizations with expenses of greater than $1 million. These numbers were comparable to 2006. Overall, women held 47 percent of the positions reported upon (an increase of 1 percentage point over 2006) but received only 35 percent of the total compensation.

• A trend of the last few years toward larger median compensation increases for incumbent female CEO continued to hold for 2007. At the very largest organizations, however, those with budgets of greater than $50 million, men had a median increase more than 1 percent higher than women.

• The larger the organization, the larger the increases in compensation. For example, CEOs at organizations with budgets between $500 thousand and $1 million saw a median increase of 3.6 percent from 2006 to 2007, whereas those at organizations with budgets of greater than $50 million had a median increase of 6.3 percent. Increases at all sizes of organizations were generally lower in 2007 than they were in 2006.

• Not surprisingly, health and science organizations had the highest overall median salaries. Food, religion, and housing organizations brought up the rear.

• For the fourth straight year, Washington, D.C., had the highest overall median salaries of the 20 largest metropolitan statistical areas, and Riverside-San Bernardino, California, had the lowest. Adjusted for cost of living, San Francisco nonprofit executives again had the lowest median buying power, while those in Houston again had the highest.

Learn more about the GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report >
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Chuck McLean and Suzanne E. Coffman, October 2009
© 2009, GuideStar USA, Inc.

Chuck McLean is GuideStar's vice president, research. Suzanne Coffman is GuideStar's director of communications and editor of the Newsletter.