The median salary for full-time positions at grant-making organizations grew to $74,061 in 2013, up from $72,000 the previous year, with workers seeing widespread gains throughout most of the industry, according to a new survey by the Council on Foundations.
Four in five foundations reported staff salary increases over the previous year. Turnover remained low.
The improving salary picture, along with incremental growth in the number of bonus payouts, was bolstered by strong stock-market returns that have increased foundations’ assets.
The median salary increase was 3 percent in 2013, slightly ahead of the Consumer Price Index, which the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports was 1.5 percent last year. For 2014, 89 percent of foundations predicted additional salary increases about equal to last year, when 90 percent of groups reported the same.
Forty-one percent of foundations gave performance-based or across-the-board bonus awards, up from less than 39 percent in 2012.
Pay for foundation employees has risen steadily since 2009, according to the council.
The council surveyed 936 U.S. grant-making organizations and compiled data on 8,404 full-time paid positions. Of those groups, 35 percent were community funds, 28 percent were private foundations, 20 percent were family funds, and the rest were other types of grant makers, like corporate and public foundations. Respondents were asked for salary and benefit data as of February 1, 2013.
Lower Turnover
Nearly half of respondents said no staff members departed last year, and 41 percent of chief executives and chief grant-making officers have held their positions for at least a decade.
Promoting from within is also common: About 23 percent of employees have advanced up the ladder at foundations in the survey, including 22 percent of CEOs.
Jobs at grant makers satisfy both employees’ idealism and their wallets the longer they stay, says Tonia Bain, research project manager at the Council on Foundations. “Working at a foundation offers people a chance to contribute to positive changes in their communities and across the world,” says Ms. Bain. “And from what we know from the survey data, foundations offer competitive salaries and benefits within the nonprofit sector.”
An Aging Work Force
Possibly because foundation employees are so long-tenured, the grant-making world is grappling with an issue that affects nonprofits more broadly: an aging work force.
The study found that 68 percent of foundation employees are age 40 and older.
By contrast, only 55 percent of the U.S. civilian work force was over 40 during that same period, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That indicates employees at foundations tend to be older than in other industries, says Ms. Bain.
“We don’t know if foundations are making an explicit decision to recruit a younger work force, but we are tracking the ongoing conversations around changing demographics of the U.S. work force and its impact on our sector,” she says.
The council is taking an interest in how grant makers are planning for the future as baby boomers begin to retire, says Ms. Bain. She adds: “One thing we will be looking at specifically this coming year ... is how many of those grant makers, and in particular CEOs and [chief grant-making officers], are actually of retirement age.”
Among the other findings:
- Racial and ethnic minorities account for only 8 percent of CEOs among all foundations in 2013 but represent 21 percent of foundation CEOs overseeing more than $1-billion in assets—a sign, perhaps, of some recent changes in leadership at some of the nation’s biggest grant-making organizations, and a signal of a trend in the making. Among all full-time staff members, 24 percent are minorities.
- As in previous years, grant makers on the coasts pay the biggest salaries. Foundations in the mid-Atlantic region pay 11.3 percent more than the national median salary of $74,061 across all positions, and those on the West Coast pay 9.7 percent more. On the other end of the spectrum, funds in Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee pay the least, with a median salary of $64,059, or 13.5 percent under the national median.
- Pay for program officers, whose median salary is $82,400, rose 0.9 percent last year but has climbed 15 percent since 2009, the greatest increase of any foundation position. By contrast, median pay for chief executives has increased 7 percent over the same period, to $156,733.
- Women continue to dominate the staff at foundations, filling 75 percent of all full-time positions and 54 percent of CEO slots. Yet only 26 percent of organizations with assets over $1-billion are led by women.
Copies of the “2013 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report” are free for Council on Foundations members and survey participants. The cost is $349 for nonmembers.
How Much Foundation CEOs Earn
