Nonprofit workers filed at least 1,181 sexual-harassment claims against their employers with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission from 1995 through 2016, according to federal data analyzed by the Chronicle.
Nearly 87 percent of claims against nonprofit employers were filed by women, while 12 percent were filed by men. Among all 170,000 claims filed with the EEOC during the same period, women filed 83 percent of claims and men lodged 15 percent.
Organizations in the Chronicle’s analysis of nonprofit-tied claims included grant-making foundations, environmental and conservation groups, human-rights organizations, and labor unions.
BuzzFeed News first obtained and reported on the EEOC data. The federal agency is responsible for enforcing workplace discrimination laws as well as combating retaliatory actions by employers in response to complaints or lawsuits. In some instances, the EEOC acts as a moderator, helping to resolve complaints. In others, it’s an investigator; it can also subpoena records and sue on behalf of complainants.
Individuals often file with the EEOC after complaints made at the organization level go unresolved or if the claimant feels actions taken by the employer were inadequate.
High-Profile Cases
Allegations of sexual violence by Hollywood movie mogul Harvey Weinstein, made public last fall, helped ignite a firestorm of public debate about harassment in the workplace, including the naming of perpetrators and resignations and firings across industries.
That includes nonprofit leaders. Humane Society CEO Wayne Pacelle resigned earlier this month, less than two weeks after the Chronicle reported he was under investigation by his own organization for workplace misconduct. Save the Children placed a senior executive on leave after a ProPublica investigation found he had harassed and assaulted female colleagues in a previous position at the American Red Cross.
The Chronicle analysis of the EEOC data found that midsize nonprofits, those that employed 15 to 100 people, were the subject of 47 percent of claims filed against nonprofits. That was higher than the 42 percent of claims levied against employers of that size when analyzing all 170,000 claims across industries.
The median age of those filing against a nonprofit employer was 38, while the median age of all complainants was 35.
The share of African-American complainants against nonprofit employers was just over 26 percent, compared with a little over 22 percent of all claimants.
These figures are likely understated, given that employees filing an EEOC claim are under no obligation to disclose what industry they work in, an EEOC representative said.
Colleges and Universities
In an analysis looking specifically at institutions of higher education, the Chronicle found that demographically, those people bringing EEOC sexual-harassment charges during the past 20 years skew more diverse and slightly older than petitioning workers across all industries.
The median age of a claimant in higher education was 39, compared with 35 for the overall labor force.
Slightly more than 27 percent of claimants within academe were African-American, versus 22 percent of petitioners over all. (Forty-eight percent of petitioners in higher education were white.)
Women filed 84 percent of the higher-education claims.
