Despite more women entering nonprofit leadership, gender pay gap persists

Though more women have increasingly become nonprofit CEOs, their compensation still lags behind male peers, a new report from Candid shows.  

The 2020 Nonprofit Compensation Report analyzed trends in nonprofits with various budget sizes, finding that female leadership largely increased in most categories from 2017 to 2018. But the gender pay gap for female CEOs remained level over that time period – and, in the case of nonprofits with budgets between $10 million and $50 million, actually increased. The gap was lowest for the smallest organizations with budgets under $250,000 at 5% and largely increases the larger the nonprofit is. For nonprofits with budgets of $25 million or greater, that gap averaged out to 18.5%.

And while the number of female CEOs is mostly increasing across the board, they are less likely to be represented in larger institutions. On average, women made up nearly 59% of CEOs leading organizations with budgets of $1 million or less – but at nonprofits with budgets exceeding $10 million, fewer than one-third of CEOs were women. 

This data tracks with previous reports released by Candid and similar research. The Center for Effective Philanthropy found that the proportion of white male executive directors responding to its survey increased the larger an organization’s budget was.