Written by Claas Ehlers, Director of Executive Transition, Support Center
There is a phenomenon that people in nonprofits notice. It sits at the intersections of race, gender, privilege, and economics.
I won’t give it a name, but I will illustrate it from my own experience. When I headed a nonprofit, I had on my staff two women who had been lawyers. Each had left their practice to focus on their families while their husbands (one a lawyer, the other a stockbroker) earned large salaries, and once their children were older, they decided to return to the workforce.
They did not go back into practice; they went into nonprofit work.
Both of these women were remarkably skilled and valuable employees. And, being a nonprofit, we paid them significantly less than what they could have made with law degrees.1 Beyond the wage gap in comparable positions is the overqualification related to roles: nonprofit managers often have PhDs, MBAs, JDs and other advanced degrees that are not required for their roles and thus not compensated as they would be in the private sector.
Also, these women working at a significant discount were white.
My experience is far from unique. I am sure every nonprofit professional can name multiple coworkers who were highly educated, usually white women working in their organizations who were not the primary breadwinners for their families.
The issue becomes most pronounced when the most senior leader in the organization is working at a discount. When this happens, there is a cascading effect on the organization’s employees, expectations, and policies.
The fact that there is a clear gender bias is a condemnation of how our society views and values women, not of women themselves. And it is a call to look at how this impacts nonprofits and what can be done about it. The racial aspect of this phenomenon is a separate, but related issue–and also one that also must be named and acted upon.
Disrupting Inequitable Compensation Practices
I talked with an experienced interim director who is Black. She highlighted this dynamic. The majority of leaders she has succeeded have sat at this intersection—with advanced degrees and able to work at wages below market. In each case, she had to educate the board about the true costs of this economic practice.
They are:
- The organization artificially deflates the entire wage structure. Underpaying your chief executive becomes an excuse to underpay everyone.
- You implicitly require a “safety net” of wealth for your leaders, which disproportionately impacts people of color (you can read up on the racial wealth gap here), people without affluent spouses, and people with lived experience of generational poverty.
- You perpetuate the undervaluing of nonprofit experience and expertise, relegating nonprofit work as a “less than” sector of the workforce.
When an interim leader comes in, there is a lot they need to address: systems and structures, culture, operations, and more. But they also need to address the impact of systemic and societal inequity. They need to speak truth to power—and make sure that boards see the uncomfortable intersections in their own organizations.
Ultimately, when you are in leadership at a nonprofit, as a board or an executive, you have to learn and change. You have to identify these harmful practices, often shrouded in concepts of “maximizing dollars” and “seizing opportunity.” You have to be willing to fight privilege and systemic inequity inside your own organization.
I know – because I had to do this myself.
Note: We don’t have to wait for an interim executive to talk about pay inequity. We can be curious and look into our nonprofit compensation practices (see this resource from the National Council of Nonprofits). Ultimately, when you are in leadership at a nonprofit, as a board or an executive, there are always opportunities to learn, evolve, and do better.
- The US Bureau of Labor Statistics notes that “wages of management, professional, and related workers at nonprofits are, on average, $3.36 per hour less than those of their counterparts employed by for-profits. Once the cost of benefits is added in, the difference in total compensation is $4.67 per hour less.
↩︎
