Nonprofit Salary Data: How to Benchmark Compensation by Role and Sector
If you’re trying to figure out what a nonprofit development director earns in Texas, or what the typical program director salary looks like at a mid-size health nonprofit, you don’t have to rely on salary surveys. That data exists in public IRS filings.
Every U.S. nonprofit with more than $200,000 in revenue files an IRS Form 990 each year, and Part VII of that form requires them to disclose the compensation of every officer, director, trustee, and key employee. That’s over 640,000 compensation records available for free, broken down by name, title, organization, and year.
The problem with nonprofit salary surveys
Most compensation benchmarks you’ll find online are based on voluntary surveys. Organizations self-select, responses skew toward larger or better-resourced nonprofits, and the data is often 12-18 months old by the time it’s published. They’re a starting point, but they have real gaps.
Form 990 data is different. Disclosure is required by law, it covers organizations of all sizes and sectors, and it’s updated annually as new filings come in. It’s not perfect — small organizations filing Form 990-EZ report fewer officer details, and there’s always some lag in IRS processing — but it’s the most complete and consistent source of nonprofit salary data available.
What you can look up
The 501(see) salary tool pulls benchmarks directly from the officer_search database across all recent 990 filings. You can filter by:
- Role — executive directors, development directors, CFOs, program directors, operations staff, HR, communications, and more
- Sector — using NTEE codes (the IRS classification system for nonprofit categories like arts, education, health, human services)
- State — filter to your geography for a more accurate comparison
- Org size — defined by revenue bands, from under $500K to over $50M
For each combination, you’ll see the 25th percentile (low), median, and 75th percentile (high) total compensation across all matching 990 records.
What the numbers include
“Total compensation” on a Form 990 adds together:
- Reportable compensation from the organization (salary, bonuses, and taxable fringe benefits)
- Reportable compensation from related organizations (if the person is also paid by an affiliate)
- Other compensation (benefits, deferred compensation, retirement contributions, nontaxable fringe benefits)
Looking at just the base salary column understates what people actually earn. The benchmarks here use total compensation, which is the right number for comparing what someone is actually paid.
How to use it
A few practical use cases:
Setting a salary offer. If you’re hiring a development director in New York and want to know what’s competitive, filter to role=development, state=NY, and the revenue band that matches your org size. The median gives you a defensible starting point; the 75th percentile shows what you’d need to compete for stronger candidates.
Board compensation reviews. The IRS expects boards to conduct a “rebuttable presumption of reasonableness” process when setting executive pay, which means documenting that you reviewed comparable compensation data. 990-based benchmarks are explicitly suitable for this purpose.
Job seekers. If you’re evaluating a nonprofit job offer and want to know whether the salary is in range, filter to the relevant role and look at where the offer lands on the distribution.
Donors and researchers. Want to know if an organization’s executive is paid in line with comparable nonprofits? The benchmarks here let you put a specific salary in context.
Limitations to know
- Benchmarks are based on officers and key employees reported on Form 990. Staff-level positions below the disclosure threshold aren’t captured.
- Small sample sizes (under 30 records) are flagged. Niche combinations — specific role + rare sector + small state — may not have enough data to be reliable.
- Data reflects what was reported to the IRS in recent filings. There’s typically a 12-18 month lag between the filing year and when the data is processed and available.
Look up nonprofit salary benchmarks by role, state, and org size →