November 11, 2004 | Read Time: 4 minutes
For the fourth straight year, female charity executives earned far less than their male counterparts
in similar jobs, according to an annual survey by GuideStar, a nonprofit organization that makes charities’ financial information available to the public.
The study, based on informational tax returns filed by 83,000 charities in the 2002 fiscal year, found that the pay gap for charity heads remains large at the biggest charities, but is narrowing at smaller charities.
The median salary for a male chief executive officer at a charity with a budget greater than $50-million was $283,392, nearly 54 percent more than the salary of women who head organizations of a similar size ($184,212).
The gaps were smaller at charities with budgets of $5-million or less. The compensation gap did not exceed 15 percent in any of GuideStar’s six budget-size categories under $5-million, and in 2002, female executives received bigger pay raises than their male counterparts in all six of those categories.
The narrowing is most striking at the smallest charities. Women heading charities with budgets of $250,000 or less earned $34,566 in 2002, slightly more than $1,000 less than men in similar positions. That pay differential at the smallest charities — 2.9 percent — narrowed by more than 80 percent from 2000 to 2002.
Role of Gender
The findings are part of the “2004 GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report.” Although the Forms 990, the informational tax returns on which the survey is based, do not require the reporting of gender, GuideStar officials said they were able to identify gender for more than 80 percent of the people included in the report by examining their names.
In addition to earning less than men for performing similar jobs, women were far less likely to work at the larger organizations where lucrative compensation is the norm.
Fewer than 25 percent of the executives at charities with budgets of $10-million or more were women. Fifty-four percent of the executives at organizations with budgets of $500,000 or less were women.
In other executive positions at charities, gender also appeared to play a strong role.
In organizations of all sizes, with only a handful of exceptions, women who held top posts in areas like fund raising, education, marketing, business ventures, and technology made less than their male counterparts. Men serving as the top business officer at charities with budgets of $50-million or more earned a median salary of $168,881, compared with just $137,313 for women in the same role.
A large gap also existed at the opposite end of the scale. In organizations with budgets of $250,000 or less, men in the top business position earned $27,580, some $5,000 more than women made.
Type of Group
The survey also examines executive compensation by type of charity and location.
Charities that focus on health care and education tended to pay their executives the most. Compensation at human-service and animal-related charities ranked at or near the bottom of all categories.
Large arts organizations are paying generous salaries, but the same cannot be said for smaller cultural groups. Arts organizations with budgets of $5-million or more paid a median salary of $146,282, meaning half made more and half made less.
That compensation trounced the pay for heads of similar-size civil-rights and advocacy organizations ($114,194). But among the small charities in those two categories — those with budgets of $500,000 or less — the opposite is true: Executives at arts organizations made just $33,966, nearly $5,000 less than their counterparts at civil-rights and advocacy groups.
The report found that cost-of-living adjustments make salaries in some less-expensive cities, such as Indianapolis, much more attractive than they seem when looking just at raw compensation numbers. Charity executives in Indianapolis at organizations with budgets between $10-million and $25-million made less than half as much as their counterparts at similar charities in Washington. But after a cost-of-living adjustment, the salaries in Indianapolis were 51 percent higher than in Washington.
GuideStar’s report costs $299 if sent by e-mail; a CD-ROM version costs $339. Nonprofit organizations that register as participants with GuideStar and provide information about their programs to be published on the organization’s Web site receive a 50-percent discount. Reports on salary data in specific states or regions are also available.
An order form is available on the GuideStar Web site, http://www.guidestar.org, or contact GuideStar customer service at 4801 Courthouse Street, Williamsburg, Va., 23188; (800) 784-9378; customerservice@guidestar.org.
