Responding to data that shows female fundraisers earn far less than male peers and are less likely to hold top jobs, the Association of Fundraising Professionals announced a new effort Wednesday to promote gender equity in the field.
The Women’s Impact Initiative will spend the next 18 months examining research on gender pay gaps — which reach as high as $20,000 a year on average — and on sexual harassment of fundraisers by colleagues and donors. The group will also gather information on proven ways to improve circumstances for women in fundraising.
The association just completed a survey of its members on sexual harassment, in conjunction with the Chronicle of Philanthropy. The Chronicle will publish the results in April and present them at the association’s conference next month in New Orleans.
The Women’s Impact Initiative’s findings will be spotlighted at a separate gathering and woven into all the association’s educational offerings, said Tycely Williams, the initiative’s chair and vice president for development at YWCA USA.
She said the effort, which will use the social-media hashtag #wwilead, has been a priority of Ann Hale, the association’s board chair and the chief development officer at the Anchorage Museum.
Though gender-equity issues have been a focus of the national conversation in the past several months, the new effort doesn’t entail “jumping on a bandwagon,” Williams said.
“The general culture always has something to do with our beliefs and our behavior,” she says. “But these initiatives have been percolating since before the #MeToo and #TimesUp movement. I know they were set into motion at least a year ago.”
The Donor Issue
Along with the announcement of the project Wednesday, the Association of Fundraising Professionals unveiled a new section of its website designed to draw input from members and their organizations on effective ways to promote gender equity.
An international task force made up of fundraisers and consultants from varied backgrounds and generations will help Williams figure out the initiative’s next tactical steps, identify benchmarks of progress, and set out timelines for the work.
The task-force roster includes men. “We want to make sure that’s a critical component to our success,” Williams said. “We want to make sure we’re not just speaking to women.”
She noted a couple of challenges ahead for the effort: One is to raise awareness about consequences for discriminatory behavior without creating a climate of fear among nonprofit organizations and employers. Another is navigating a culture that venerates donors and is reluctant to call out their inappropriate behavior.
“Traditionally, our profession is one that lifts a donor up on a pedestal,” Williams said. “How do we continue to honor the donor who is investing in the important work of philanthropy while creating a safe space for a woman to bring forward a complaint if she feels she was placed in an uncomfortable situation? And that’s delicate.”
Pay Gaps at the Top
Gender gaps in other areas of the nonprofit world are also coming under scrutiny. Women make up a small portion of the highest-paid employees at international development organizations, according to a new study of such nonprofits by researchers at the Center for Global Development, a think tank.
The center’s Charles Kenny and Tanvi Jaluka pulled data from the informational tax filings of 30 organizations working internationally —10 charities, 10 think tanks, and 10 foundations, selected randomly.
At think tanks that focus on international development, only 10 percent of the highest-paid staff members — those among the top five earners in an organization — are female, according to the analysis. The figures for other global charities and grant makers were 20 and 30 percent, respectively.
Compensation for the best-paid female staff members at global development groups falls well short of that of male peers. Women in the top tier are paid an average of 84 percent of what male colleagues make at international development charities, 75 percent at think tanks, and 70 percent at foundations.
“These are preliminary findings, but they suggest that U.S. institutions involved in international development may not be sufficiently practicing what they preach when it comes to gender equality,” said Kenny, a senior fellow at the center, in a statement.
As a next step, the researchers hope to make a more extensive study with a larger sample and examine how global development groups fare in terms of hiring and compensating people of color.
Focusing on Diversity
Under a new president, Masood Ahmed, the Center for Global Development plans to tackle its own challenges regarding diversity. Of its 21 board members, only five are women and three are people of color, said Amanda Glassman, the group’s chief operating officer.
“We’ll be intentionally working on this for the rest of this year,” Glassman said. That includes rethinking how the center recruits board members and breaking habits common to the nonprofit field: “A lot of times, board members are friends of existing board members.”
The center also recently overhauled its human-resources policies to add salary tiers and create a more promising career path for its more junior employees, who are mostly female, Glassman said. It’s also weighing new ideas, like designating what she called “an ombudsman peer,” a rank-and-file employee with special training who can field colleagues’ complaints or concerns if misconduct should occur.
Empowering women is part of the center’s mission, Glassman said. “It behooves us to raise [concerns] when we see something problematic.”
