Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report pricing: what the $449 and $1,199 licenses buy, and what they miss
The 2026 Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report costs $449 for an individual license or $1,199 for an organizational license. It reports pay for 14 executive positions from the fiscal year 2024 Form 990 filings of 119,701 nonprofits, filtered by budget, state, 285 metro areas and subsector. It is the best single source for executive director pay, and by Candid's own description it does not cover staff below the executive level.
So the buying decision is simpler than it looks. If your board is about to set or renew the executive director's pay and your organization is over $1 million in gross receipts, $449 is cheap insurance. If what you actually need is a salary for the program manager you are hiring next month, the report cannot help you at any price. Here is what each license gets you, where the data comes from, and what to pair it with.
Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report pricing, 2026
| License | Price | Who can use it |
|---|---|---|
| Individual | $449 | One user |
| Organizational | $1,199 | Shared across your organization |
Both licenses open the same data. The only difference is how many people can log in, so the organizational license is worth it only when several staff genuinely need to run the filters themselves. For a board review, one committee chair or the HR lead with the individual license can pull the cut and put it in the board packet, which is what the documentation rule needs anyway. Candid lists no public discount code on its report page; the saving that exists is choosing the $449 license over the $1,199 one.
What the report covers
The data is not a survey. Candid reads IRS Form 990 and 990-EZ filings and aggregates the compensation reported in them. For the 2026 edition that meant fiscal year 2024 returns from 119,701 organizations, private foundations excluded. That is a real strength: the numbers are filed under penalty of perjury, and the sample dwarfs any voluntary survey. The filters are the other strength, because they are exactly the ones the IRS cares about: budget size, state, 285 metropolitan statistical areas, cause area, and organization type.
The 14 positions are all executive: CEO or executive director, CFO, chief development officer, and the top roles in administration, business, education, facilities, finance, human resources, legal, operations, technology and communications. Candid also publishes free summary findings each year. The 2026 headline was that women CEOs earned 73 cents for every dollar earned by men in 2024, unchanged since 2023, and 96 cents at organizations under $250,000.
What it misses, and why
The gap is built into Form 990. Under the 2025 IRS instructions, Part VII lists officers, directors and trustees at any pay, key employees only above $150,000 of reportable compensation, and the five highest compensated other employees only above $100,000. Nobody else appears. At a 40-person nonprofit that usually means the executive director and perhaps one or two senior managers, and nothing about the program staff who make up most of the payroll. The smallest organizations file the 990-N postcard, which carries no compensation at all.
| You need to price | Candid report | Better source |
|---|---|---|
| Executive director, over $1M receipts | Strong | This is its job |
| Executive director, under $1M receipts | More than you need | Three comparable 990s |
| CFO or development director | Good, if the role is on 990s in your band | Candid plus market data |
| Program manager, coordinator, case worker | Not covered | Regional survey or BLS by metro |
| Salary range for a job ad | Not covered | Current market range by metro |
The second limit is age. Fiscal year 2024 filings, published in August 2026, describe pay that is about two years old. Private sector wages and salaries rose 3.1 percent in the twelve months to June 2026 in the Employment Cost Index, so a 2024 figure needs roughly 6.3 percent added (1.031 squared) before it stands in for today's market. Our salary increase calculator carries the current ECI figures if you want to age other numbers the same way. A board that compares its director's 2026 pay with unaged 2024 medians will conclude the pay is high when it may simply be current.
When the Candid report is worth $449
Buy it when three things are true. Your organization has more than $1 million in gross receipts, so the small organization rule does not cover you. The board is making or renewing an executive pay decision this year and wants the rebuttable presumption. And you will actually use the cuts. The regulation's own examples draw the line here: a national survey with no breakdown by size or geography was not appropriate data, and the same survey divided by size and area was. Candid gives you those divisions, which is why it is worth the money for this one decision.
Skip it when the organization is under $1 million. The regulation says three comparable organizations in the same or similar communities are enough, and their 990s are free to read. Skip it, too, when the question is about staff. For those roles the report is empty by design. The step by step on the presumption itself is on our nonprofit executive compensation page, and the popular "percentage of budget" shortcut is taken apart in nonprofit CEO salary as a percentage of budget.
What to pair it with for staff pay
Every other role on the payroll needs market data that includes people who never appear on a 990. There are two routes. A regional nonprofit survey, bought as a participant, is usually the cheapest: Nonprofit Compensation Associates charges California participants $100 to $210 depending on budget, and several state associations sell reports for $75 to $150. The limitation is that it arrives once a year and covers only its region. The full list, with prices and coverage, is in our nonprofit salary survey comparison.
The other route is public wage data by metro. The BLS wage survey counts every employer, nonprofit and for-profit, which is what the regulation asks for when it names "similarly situated organizations, both taxable and tax-exempt". Your finance manager and your IT lead are recruited by for-profit employers too, so a benchmark that leaves them out understates the market you are actually hiring in. WageList turns that data into a band and a posted range for any role, in any metro, on the day you open the requisition, for $948 a year. Price a role in the panel on this page to see what it produces.
A realistic setup for a $3 million nonprofit: the Candid individual license for the executive review, plus a participant regional report or WageList for staff. That is $604 or $1,397 a year, and it covers both the governance question and the hiring question properly, instead of one expensive report stretched over both.
If you are the executive director being reviewed
Directors often buy this report themselves before a contract renewal, and that is sensible: the board will look at the same cut, and it helps to know it first. Pull your budget band and metro, age the figures forward, and bring the comparison to the committee in writing. If you want help framing the conversation itself, a salary negotiation coach can help you rehearse how to present the numbers and answer the pushback. Keep in mind that the committee members voting on your pay must have no conflict of interest, so the case has to stand on the data rather than on relationships.
Candid compensation report questions buyers ask
How much does the Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report cost?
The 2026 edition costs $449 for an individual license, which gives one person access, and $1,199 for an organizational license that can be shared across your team. Both licenses cover the same data: 14 executive positions from the fiscal year 2024 Form 990 and 990-EZ filings of 119,701 nonprofits.
Is the Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report free?
No. Candid publishes free summary findings on its blog and offers a sample, but the full report with the filters is paid. The underlying Form 990 filings are public, so you can read individual organizations for free on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; what you pay Candid for is the aggregation into percentiles by budget, geography and subsector.
What positions does the Candid compensation report cover?
Fourteen executive roles, including CEO or executive director, CFO, chief development officer, and the top administrative, business, education, facilities, human resources, legal, operations, technology and communications positions. Candid states that the report does not cover staff positions below the executive level, because Form 990 rarely lists them.
Is the Candid report good enough for the IRS rebuttable presumption?
It can be, if the board uses the cuts rather than the national figure. The regulation treats an undivided national survey as inadequate and the same survey divided by size and geography as appropriate. Candid filters by budget, state and 285 metro areas, so a board that documents the matching cut is on solid ground.
How old is the data in the Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report?
The 2026 edition, released in August 2026, uses fiscal year 2024 filings, so the pay it reports is roughly two years old when you read it. At the 3.1 percent annual private sector wage growth in the latest Employment Cost Index, a board should age those figures up by about 6.3 percent before comparing.
The short version
Spend $449 on the individual license when the board is setting executive pay at an organization over $1 million, and use the budget and metro cuts. Do not buy it to price staff; it has no staff data. For every other role, use a regional survey or current market ranges by metro, which is the part WageList does.
Sources: Candid, Nonprofit Compensation Report product page and 2026 findings (August 18, 2026); Treasury Regulation 26 CFR 53.4958-6(c)(2); IRS, 2025 Instructions for Form 990, Part VII; BLS Employment Cost Index, June 2026; Nonprofit Compensation Associates 2026 fee schedule. Confirm current pricing with Candid directly.