If you're thinking of starting a non-profit or working for a non-profit you might be wondering
what the average staff salaries for paid positions at these organizations might be.
So in this video I'm going to talk a little bit more about what you might expect in terms of those
salary ranges for non-profits and how those ranges have changed since the year before that. Welcome
or welcome back! My name is Amber Melanie Smith. I'm a non-profit founder and executive director of
the nonprofit that I started. I make these videos here on YouTube to help people who are interested
in making a social impact whether that's through starting a non-profit or social enterprise
service leadership and more. I really hope that as always you find this video helpful and
educational and don't forget to give it a like and subscribe to my channel for more content like
this and if you're in the process of starting a non-profit or developing a sustainable fundraising
plan for a non-profit don't forget to check out my website FounderToFulltime.com where I've got some
online trainings there that might help you out. So if you've been watching my channel for a little
while you might remember that in 2020, I actually did a similar video where I first talked about the
average staff salaries at non-profit organizations in the united states. I also talked about this
ongoing dialogue that is happening across the non-profit sector about paying fair wages in the
nonprofit world and that i would be curious to see how the data on staff salaries would change over
the next few years many factors have contributed to the financial stability of organizations
over the past couple of years during the pandemic a lot of organizations took a financial hit and
on the other side some organizations found that donations and support surged so you see a wide
spectrum of financial situations for organizations now in 2022 and of course all of this impacts
hiring tendencies of organizations as well as offered salaries in this video I'm going to
talk about the latest salary data in the nonprofit sector across the united states
the report that i will be referring to is from Guidestar it's from 2021 and I will be showing
how those numbers compare to the same data from 2020 to see what has changed but before i get
into that i just want to do a quick recap of the different factors that could influence what
the salary is at a non-profit organization okay the first one is obvious and that is what is the
job position what is the role that is being hired for people who are directors or managers like the
chief executive officer aka the executive director or a fund development director these positions are
higher up in the managerial scheme and so they're more likely to command higher salaries
fascinatingly what type of non-profit it is can also impact salary ranges in the reports that i've
been looking at for example it's interesting to see that animal related organizations often have
lower salaries than for example arts or education organizations another factor is the annual budget
of the nonprofit organization obviously an organization that has a budget of 250,000 a
year is unlikely to be able to pay their staff the same as an organization with a five million dollar
budget per year another factor is the location of the non-profit uh just like any job market or job
situation the salaries are going to be likely to follow the costs of living and the salary
expectations for those in a particular local community and of course the experience of the job
candidate is going to impact the salary that might be offered to them as well but that's true in any
sector all right let's get into the comparison here from the 2020 numbers to the 2021 numbers in
my original video i broke this down by the staff position and so i will be doing the same here and
i'm going to be highlighting the numbers around four key positions that's the executive director
a fund development manager or director a marketing manager and a programs manager
let's start with the executive director once again this is senior level position usually the highest
paid position in a non-profit organization so i have for organizations under a 250,000
budget and like i said before that's an important criteria that impacts salary
ranges for an executive director in 2020 i noted that the average salary was about 46,000
with a range that's lowest to highest of 20,000 to 76,000. now here's where we're at in 2021.
in 2021 the average has only gone up a little bit i'm seeing an average here of forty seven
thousand dollars but the range is twenty one thousand to seventy eight thousand so
i'm actually um a little bit surprised that there hasn't been more movement here but the ranges are
pretty similar to where they were in 2020. however when you get to a larger organization uh i got all
excited because i thought something was going to be different but it turns out numbers are pretty
similar for organizations with a budget of 250 to 500,000 so a little bit bigger but we're still not
talking about a really large organization here the average ED salary executive director salary is 69
thousand so between the smaller and the slightly larger organization the average does go up a bit
but the range is thirty two thousand to a hundred and ten thousand so you see this range getting
wider here in 2021 it's basically the exact same you have a 69 000 average but the range is now 33
000 at the low end to 110 000 per year so i have to say there's barely any movement at
all on the executive director salary range at least according to this particular compensation
report by Guidestar it's a little disappointing but let's see how some of the other positions
fared all right now we're going to talk about your fundraising managers or fund development managers
these are your positions that are doing your fundraising strategy they're out there raising
money a lot it's often a very highly valued role in an organization and usually one of
the ones that commands one of the higher salaries so for those organizations that are under 250 000
in 2020 i said the average salary was thirty seven thousand and the range for that was eighteen
thousand to fifty four thousand dollars in 2021 we still see a little bit of movement on the average
the average is 38 000. but the range is very interesting the range changed a little bit it
got wider the range is now 16 000 to 69 000. so you see a lot higher um of a salary on that high
end but weirdly a slightly lower salary on the low end i'm not sure what to make of that
now as the organization gets a little bit bigger for that 250 to 500 000 a year budget for this
fund development manager position you've got in 2020 the average was 51 000 and the range was 20
000 to 78 000 so it's a pretty big range still but fascinatingly in 2021 the average does go
up a decent amount the average is now 56 000 with a range of 22 000 to 114 thousand dollars
so again that range is just expanding showing the great diversity of approaches that non-profits
across the country are taking in terms of staff compensation i'm not sure what to attribute to
these changes and the broadening of these ranges one hypothesis that comes to mind is maybe
new non-profit organizations were being formed and when you're newer and smaller of course you
are either unable to hire paid staff at all or you have to try to hire them at a low
range so possibly that is something that could have influenced the change in the the range of
salaries there it's just really fascinating let's talk about marketing managers next and for these
i don't have a range but i do have the averages so in 2020 for that smaller organization size of
under 250 000 per year the average salary was 30 000 in 2021 we do see that average
salary go up to 36 000. so that's a that's a significant percentage increase for that
now with those larger organizations we're seeing something similar happen that 250 to 500 000 range
you've got 40k being the average i would expect that actually to be slightly higher but uh that's
20 20. in 2021 we do see a 51 000 average so that is again a pretty big jump from those averages um
i wonder if people are you know during the sort of great shifting around of positions
that people seem to be doing i wonder if people are coming over to the non-profit world from the
business world which usually commands higher salaries and influencing and putting pressure
on these non-profits to pay a little bit higher so that's another interesting theory as to why
for example a marketing position might have seen a bigger jump than some of these others
finally let's talk about your programs managers these are usually the leaders who are overseeing
um how your program is functioning making sure that you've got your volunteers doing what they're
needing to do scheduling them making sure that the people that your are getting that direct service
so once again for these smaller organizations we're seeing in 2020 that 36 000 average salary
and in 2021 for the program manager position we're seeing just slight movement here to 38 000 average
now for that slightly larger organization size 250 to 500 000 we do see a little bit of a change
the average in 2020 was 50 000. and in 2021 for whatever reason the data is not available in this
report but based on the other positions i would probably guess that it would have stayed at that
range or slightly higher 50 to 52k maybe now when you hit an annual budget of a million dollars or
more you do see significant movement in the staff salaries you might see an executive director
who at a middle range would be getting a hundred thousand dollars per year or so
at this point i'd love to get your impressions were the numbers higher or lower than you expected
what surprised you most about this information and how it has changed or hasn't changed over the past
year or so share in the comments below and as i mentioned before if you are starting a non-profit
or developing a sustainable fundraising plan or trying to develop a sustainable fundraising
plan for your organization i've got some great trainings and resources available at my website
founder to fulltime.com and i hope you check those out and if you're looking for resources and
funding opportunities and stuff like that i do a newsletter for non-profit leaders and change
makers you can subscribe to that and opt out anytime you like but the link to subscribe is
in the description of my video here so definitely check that out too if that's
something that you're interested in receiving one more thing i promise check out my group
uh change the world or bust on Facebook we have 3,000 people in there from all around the world
who are interested in making impact in various ways and sharing what they're working on
in the group so please come on by change the world or bust i'd love to have you
become a part of our little community there once again i hope that this video was
helpful and educational I'm Amber Melanie Smith. Don't forget to give this video a
like and subscribe to my channel and i hope to see you next time. Thanks, bye!