Inflation is 3.7% through August 2023, following 6.5% in 2022 and 7.0% in 2021, according to government figures. These high levels raise the question for many: have salary increases for nonprofit executives kept up as the cost of living has soared in recent years?

Nonprofit salaries are likely to have climbed significantly since 2021, thanks to upward pressure from inflation and a continuing hot job market, said Mary Plum, a senior consultant with the Development Guild. Plum also told The Chronicle that the increasing number of states and localities adopting pay transparency laws means job candidates come to the negotiating table armed with what they believe they’re worth on the market.

Pay has been going up in recent years, Plum summarized, but “I would say that in the past six months to a year, those jumps are even higher.”

Before inflation recently spiked, executive pay in nonprofits had been running ahead of inflation. From 2017 to 2021, median compensation was up 6% when adjusted for cost-of-living growth over those years. 

However, according to a recently released Candid study of more than 120,000 nonprofit organizations, median compensation for top officials climbed 3.2% in 2021 to $129,000, up from $125,000 in 2020 – growth that did not keep pace with inflation for that year. (Candid assembles its report from tax filings, and 2021 is the latest year for which the Internal Revenue Service has made forms available.)

Other findings from Candid’s report noted that median executive compensation at the largest groups with annual revenues of more than $50 million was $293,000. At the smallest organizations, whose revenues were under $250,000, median pay was $43,000.

Also, during the years studied, pay for female executives continued to inch close to their male counterparts. As of 2021, women represented the majority of CEOs at smaller organizations, although less than one-third of CEOs at the largest groups.

In related news, fundraiser salaries continued to grow in 2022 but not enough to keep up with inflation, according to a January-February 2023 Association of Fundraising Professionals’ annual survey on fundraiser compensation that drew 3,561 U.S. responses. The median salary for a U.S. fundraiser was $83,000, up 6.4 percent from 2021 when the median was $78,000. But given the high inflation last year, fundraisers couldn’t pocket much of that wage growth. More analysis here.

For more news on nonprofit compensation and related issues, see ECFA.org/news, much of which is regularly reported in the eNewsletter, ECFA Pulse.