Methodology

How CauseComp builds its benchmarks

CauseComp runs two independent, data-driven engines from authoritative public sources — one for executive pay, one for the broader workforce. Both report a full percentile range (25th / 50th / 75th), so you see the market spread, not just a single number.

Executive Compensation 990

Data source

Officer, director, trustee, and key-employee pay reported on IRS Form 990 (Schedule J and Part VII, Section A) and Form 990-EZ — the public filings U.S. nonprofits submit annually, sourced directly from the IRS's bulk e-file releases. This is real, disclosed compensation, not survey self-report.

Drawn from 2.2M+ cleaned compensation records across IRS e-file releases; the benchmark model is built from those that report both positive compensation and positive organization revenue.

Model

Minimum comparables

We hold a standard for how thin a cohort can be before we speak: we'd rather tell you we don't have enough comparables than invent a number. Where no comparable filings back a role at that size, CauseComp declines to serve a benchmark and instead suggests better-covered roles. From 1 filing upward a benchmark is served; below 10 it carries a visible low-confidence flag rather than being withheld — a thin cell is disclosed, not suppressed. The count behind that gate is filings for the role inside the revenue fence; it does not narrow by sector or state, and the composition line on every comparables set reports separately how many of the organizations listed are in your sector and your state.

§4958 comparables

For board documentation, CauseComp surfaces a §4958 comparables set — specific public 990 filings, drawn by role within a one-third to three-times revenue fence and a rolling three-year filing window, then ranked by sector and state. The benchmark itself is modeled from the full 990 corpus: the comparables set is drawn separately and does not produce the figure. It supports the comparability-data prong of the IRS §4958 rebuttable presumption of reasonableness for setting executive pay.

Published medians for individual roles, drawn from the same filings, are on the nonprofit salary benchmark pages. Those pages hold a stricter rule, not the same one: a cell publishes only with at least 20 filings. A published page is indexed and stands on its own, where a benchmark is served on request beside its own disclosure.

If you are new to these rules, our plain-English guides to §4958 and board pay governance cover the process this data supports. For the excise tax that sits alongside them, see how the expanded §4960 rules reach further than most boards expect.

Broad-Based & Workforce BLS OEWS · O*NET

Data source

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics (OEWS) program — the official national wage survey — covering 850+ roles mapped to standard SOC occupation codes, using the most recent BLS OEWS release.

Calibration chain

Coverage standard

Where BLS does not publish a reliable wage for an occupation, CauseComp does not benchmark it — the role returns a clear "not benchmarked" explanation rather than a nearest-relative guess. Legacy occupation titles are aliased to their current SOC successors, so a served figure always reflects an occupation BLS actually measures.

Role context

Where O*NET publishes a description of the occupation, each role's results show it, so you can compare the job behind the title with the one you are pricing.

Reading the numbers

Want a board-ready recommendation tailored to your organization? CauseComp is built by RB Consulting Services, LLC — we can turn these benchmarks into a documented pay decision.
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