Original data on nonprofit compensation.

Nonprofit boards benchmark executive pay against IRS Form 990 filings — data that is stale on arrival. In CauseComp's analysis of 2.29 million compensation records, even for organizations filing the freshest data, the market projected to December 31, 2026 runs 6.8% ahead of their filed chief executive pay, and for boards relying on FY2022 filings it runs 21.1% ahead. The report also maps what organization size does to the corner-office paycheck, shows nonprofit CEO pay tracking wage growth (the Employment Cost Index) almost exactly from FY2019 to FY2024 — while diverging by organization size — ranks all 50 states and DC on size-adjusted executive pay, and, new in this edition, measures pay mix and bonuses at larger organizations and what a new chief executive is paid against the predecessor.

In tax year 2023 Form 990 returns, the second-highest-paid executive earned a median 70.9% of the chief executive's reportable pay from the organization at nonprofits with $25 million to under $50 million in revenue, and 66.7% at $100 million to under $500 million. Counting the second-highest-paid person listed on the Form 990, clinicians and faculty included, the figures are 71.7% and 68.8%.

Of 70,439 nonprofits that report a paid executive director or CEO in both tax years 2022 and 2023, 8.1% changed their chief executive between the two years. Each pair of years from 2020 to 2023 sits between 7.5% and 8.3%, and the rate is broadly similar across budget sizes, from 7.3% under $500,000 to 9.6% at $50 million and over. The filings show no rise in measured turnover. Organizations led under a President title, among others, are outside the measure: only 60.1% of organizations with returns in both years can be scored.

At small nonprofits in the Form 990 record, 95.3% of paid officer positions have at least three comparable organizations in the same state, 50.6% have three in the same city, and 18.8% have three in the same city and NTEE sector. Treasury regulations let an organization with gross receipts under $1 million treat data on three comparable organizations in the same or similar communities for similar services as appropriate comparability data, so how many peers a board can find depends on how it reads community.

Of 179,251 paid officer positions in the Form 990 record, 97.9% have at least 20 other organizations reporting the same role in the same budget band across the country, and 89.5% have 20 in the same state. For the Executive Director / CEO role, 97.3% have 20 in their own state and budget band. CauseComp draws a peer set by role and organization size from that national record, and uses state and sector to rank the candidates rather than to cut them (this page's fixed budget bands; CauseComp's own peer sets use a revenue window around each organization; see caveat c).

The §4958 regulations ask boards for pay data from similarly situated organizations: like services, like enterprises, like circumstances. A CauseComp analysis of 732,319 officer compensation records measures the gap between that standard and the single national median for the role. In nearly two-thirds of similarly-situated cohorts, the cohort's own median sits more than 25% away from the role's national figure, and the typical gap is 38%.

Boards argue about cost-of-living adjustments and sector premiums. A variance decomposition across 732,319 officer compensation records finds both arguments are about the small dials: organization budget size explains roughly five times more of the variation in officer pay than state, and roughly four times more than mission sector.

Published compensation surveys concentrate on a familiar list: the CEO, the CFO, a handful of chiefs. The filings do not. Across 732,319 officer compensation records, 39.4% of all reported compensation ($64.6 billion of $164.2 billion) was paid in roles outside that familiar list, in positions boards must still price and can rarely look up.

The 2025 tax law expanded which nonprofit employees can trigger the 21% excise tax on compensation over $1 million — from each organization's five highest-paid employees to any employee. A CauseComp analysis of the most recent IRS Form 990 Schedule J filings from more than 67,000 organizations finds the expansion reaches an estimated 734 to 1,302 additional employees earning over $1 million — a 25–28% increase — while adding essentially zero newly exposed organizations. The impact lands almost entirely on hospitals, universities, and organizations with budgets above $100 million.