Nonprofit salary reports: every nonprofit salary survey and nonprofit compensation survey compared, with prices
A nonprofit salary report costs anywhere from nothing to $1,199 in 2026, and which one you need depends on two things: whether you are pricing the executive director or the staff, and whether your organization is above $1 million in gross receipts. Below is every major US report with its real price, what it covers, and whether it passes the IRS comparability test.
Need a range for a staff role today? Pick it on the right. The builder prices it from the federal wage survey, which counts nonprofit and for-profit employers alike, and gives you a range you can post.
Prices checked against each publisher's own page, September 2026
- P25
- $0
- P50 ยท Median
- $0
- P75
- $0
Suggested posted range
Built from public U.S. BLS OES wage data (May 2024 release), adjusted for market, seniority and company stage by the multipliers published in our methodology.
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Get startedWhich nonprofit salary survey to buy, in four sentences
For executive pay, buy the survey that reports your budget size and your region, because an undivided national range is exactly what the IRS regulation uses as its example of data that fails. Candid's report ($449) is the broadest executive source, drawn from 119,701 Form 990 filings. For staff roles, Form 990 data is nearly empty, so use a regional survey or public BLS data by metro. Under $1 million in gross receipts, three comparable organizations are enough and you may not need to buy anything.
Most nonprofits buy one report and try to make it do two jobs. The executive director's pay is a governance question: the board has to approve it on comparability data it can document, or the organization loses the protection of the IRS rebuttable presumption. The pay of the program manager you are hiring next month is a labor market question, and in most states it is also a posting law question. Different data answers each one well.
Quick guide
- Executive pay, over $1M receipts
- Segmented survey
- Executive pay, under $1M receipts
- 3 comparables
- Staff roles
- Regional or BLS
- Posted job ad range
- Metro market data
Nonprofit salary reports and their 2026 prices
Every price below comes from the publisher's own page or, where noted, from a nonprofit resource center that lists it. Participant discounts are real and large: several surveys charge non-participants two to three times what they charge organizations that submitted data.
| Report | Price | Covers | Data | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report 2026 | $449 individual, $1,199 organization | 14 executive positions, national, by budget, state, 285 metros, subsector | FY2024 Form 990 and 990-EZ filings, 119,701 organizations | Executive director and C-suite pay |
| MRA 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Survey | $599 members, $1,199 non-members | 168 jobs from 164 organizations | Collected Oct to Nov 2025, published March 2026 | Staff and management roles in MRA's region |
| Nonprofit Compensation Associates 2026 (with CalNonprofits) | Participants $100 to $210, non-participants $270 to $570, businesses $795 | More than 200 positions, Northern and Southern California | Employer survey, by budget, geography and field | California nonprofits, all roles |
| The NonProfit Times 2025 Salary and Benefits Report | $475 combined, $375 salary only | National nonprofit positions; benefits sold separately at $375 | 2025 edition, the latest on sale | A national staff benchmark |
| Western Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits (MT, ID, WA, OR, UT, AK, HI) | Free to participating Montana members, $75 to non-member participants | Seven western states, run with Boise State University | Employer survey, deadline was Nov 14, 2025 | Small western nonprofits |
| North Carolina Center for Nonprofits | $75 to $150 | 140 positions, by budget and staff size | Current edition is 2022 | NC nonprofits, if you age the data |
| Archbright nonprofit special report | $450 (as listed by 501 Commons) | 163 nonprofits in WA, OR and ID | Listed edition is 2022 | Pacific Northwest staff roles |
| 501 Commons King County Wage and Benefits Survey | Free | 235 nonprofits in King County, WA | Employer survey plus an online tracker | Seattle area nonprofits |
| WageList | $99 a month, or $948 a year | Any staff role, national, metro or remote, with a posted range | BLS OEWS, all employers, taxable and tax-exempt | Staff bands and job ad ranges, all year |
Two honest caveats about our own row. WageList does not separate nonprofit employers from for-profit ones, because the federal survey it is built on does not; if your board wants a nonprofit-only peer group for the executive director, a report like Candid's is the right tool for that one decision. And the New York State survey run by the New York Council of Nonprofits and Nonprofit New York covers all staff positions, but its report price is not published on the survey page, so it is not in the table.
What makes a nonprofit compensation survey count for the IRS
The reason a nonprofit buys a salary survey at all is Treasury Regulation 53.4958-6, the rebuttable presumption that executive pay is reasonable. One of its three conditions is that the board relied on "appropriate data as to comparability". The regulation spells out what that includes: "compensation levels paid by similarly situated organizations, both taxable and tax-exempt, for functionally comparable positions", the availability of similar services in your area, "current compensation surveys compiled by independent firms", and written offers from competing employers.
Then it gives two examples that decide which report to buy. In Example 1 a board sets its president's pay using a national survey that "does not divide its data by any criteria, such as the number of students served by the institution, annual revenues, academic ranking, or geographic location". That data is not appropriate. In Example 2 the same survey, divided by size and geography, is. Same publisher, same job, opposite result.
Checklist before you pay for a report
- Does it cut the data by budget or revenue band, and does one of those bands contain you?
- Does it report your state or metro, not only a national figure?
- Is the job defined by duties, so you can match your role, not just a title?
- How many organizations sit in the cut you will actually use? A national headline count means little if your cell has six.
- How old is the pay? A 2022 report used in 2026 needs to be aged forward, and the board minutes should say how.
The full three-part presumption, including the conflict-of-interest and documentation rules, is on our nonprofit executive compensation page.
Under $1 million: three comparables instead of a survey
$1M
Annual gross receipts, including contributions, below which the small organization rule in 53.4958-6(c)(2)(ii) applies.
3
Comparable organizations "in the same or similar communities for similar services" whose pay data the board needs.
3 years
You may average gross receipts over the three prior tax years to test the line, and controlled entities are aggregated.
This is the cheapest compliant route in the whole field. A $700,000 community organization does not need a $449 report to set its executive director's pay: three Form 990s from comparable local organizations, pulled from ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and summarized in a short memo to the board, satisfy the rule. Where it runs out is everyone else on staff. Form 990s of small organizations list the officers and almost nobody below them, so the same three filings tell you nothing about what to pay your case manager.
Why Form 990 salary reports cannot price your staff
Candid, ERI's Form 990 Finder and ProPublica all read the same source: Part VII of Form 990. The 2025 Instructions for Form 990 decide who appears there, and the thresholds are high. Officers, directors and trustees are listed at any pay. Key employees appear only above $150,000 of reportable compensation. The five highest compensated other employees appear only above $100,000.
Put that against a typical 40-person nonprofit. The executive director is listed. Maybe the finance director, if pay tops $100,000. The program managers, coordinators, case workers, development associates and the office manager almost never are. Organizations filing the 990-N postcard, which is most of the smallest ones, report no pay at all. That is why Candid's report covers 14 executive positions and states plainly that it does not cover staff below the executive level. It is the right tool for one job.
There is also a time lag. The 2026 Candid edition, released August 18, 2026, is built on fiscal year 2024 filings. If private sector wages grew 3.1 percent a year, the most recent Employment Cost Index figure, a 2024 salary has to be raised about 6.3 percent to stand in for 2026 pay. Boards that skip that step set pay against a market that has already moved.
| Person | Listed when |
|---|---|
| Officers, directors, trustees | Always, no pay threshold |
| Key employees | Over $150,000 reportable pay |
| Five highest compensated others | Over $100,000 reportable pay |
| Everyone else on staff | Never |
Source: IRS, 2025 Instructions for Form 990, Part VII.
What a nonprofit actually spends on salary data
Three realistic setups for a nonprofit with a $3 million budget and 35 staff in Northern California, priced from the table above.
Participate and buy regional
$155
Nonprofit Compensation Associates participant price for $1 million to $5 million in expenses. Covers staff and executives in the region, once a year. Skipping the survey raises it to $420.
Executive plus staff
$604
Candid individual license ($449) for the board's executive review, plus the regional participant report ($155) for staff. The strongest governance file for the money.
Always-on staff pricing
$948
WageList yearly plan. Prices any role in any metro the day you open a requisition, builds bands for all 35 roles, and writes the range for the job ad. Pair it with Candid for the director.
The annual survey and the software do different things. A survey is a snapshot you buy once a year, usually months after the data was collected. The hiring you do between reports, a new grant-funded position in March or a remote hire in another state, still needs a number and, in most states now, a posted range. That is the gap WageList fills. If you are comparing it with the enterprise platforms, the salary survey providers comparison covers Mercer, WTW, Radford and the rest.
Price every nonprofit role in four steps
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Step 1
Split the roster
Separate the positions the board must approve under the rebuttable presumption from every other staff role.
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Step 2
Pick the executive data
Under $1 million, three comparables. Above it, a survey cut by your budget band and region, bought or joined in time for the review.
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Step 3
Band the staff
Price each staff role at P25, P50 and P75 for your metro and set a band per level, so offers stay consistent.
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Step 4
Post and document
Publish the range in each job ad where the law requires it and keep the source with the board minutes.
Band every staff role before the next grant hire
WageList prices each role by metro from federal wage data, builds your bands and writes the posted range. Plans start at $99 a month.
Who buys nonprofit salary data, and why
The board compensation committee
Setting or renewing the executive director's contract, and needing a file that shows the decision rested on comparable data rather than on what the last director earned.
The HR or operations lead
Hiring several roles a year in a state with a salary range law, who needs a defensible range for each posting. See job posting salary ranges.
The finance director
Building a grant budget where every personnel line has to be justified to a funder, and cannot wait for next year's survey to price a new position.
The new executive director
Inheriting pay that grew by exception for a decade, and needing a structure that removes inequities before a staff member points them out.
Nonprofits are covered by pay transparency laws too
State salary range laws count employees and look at where the job is; they do not ask about tax status. A nonprofit with a single employee in Colorado must post a range, and in California the duty starts at 15 employees. That turns salary data from an annual governance exercise into a requirement on every job ad, which is the strongest practical reason for a small nonprofit to have current market ranges for each role rather than one report on the shelf.
The rules differ state by state on thresholds, what "good faith" means and whether benefits must be listed. Our pay transparency law guide has each state, and the 2026 state by state table puts them side by side. For building the bands themselves, see how to create salary bands.
Nonprofit salary survey questions buyers ask
Where can I find nonprofit salary data?
Four places. Candid publishes executive pay from IRS Form 990 filings. Regional surveys such as MRA, Nonprofit Compensation Associates and your state association of nonprofits cover staff roles. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer shows individual 990s for free. And the BLS wage survey covers every occupation at every employer, taxable and tax-exempt, by metro area.
How do nonprofits determine salaries?
They price each job against comparable employers in the same labor market, then have the board approve executive pay using that comparability data. The IRS regulation lists what counts: pay at similarly situated organizations, both taxable and tax-exempt, independent compensation surveys, and written offers from competing employers. Most nonprofits then set a range per role.
How much does the Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report cost?
The 2026 edition costs $449 for an individual single-user license and $1,199 for an organizational license that the whole team can use. It covers 14 executive positions drawn from fiscal year 2024 Form 990 and 990-EZ filings of 119,701 nonprofits, filtered by budget, state, 285 metro areas and subsector.
Which nonprofit salary survey is best?
The best one is the survey that reports your budget size and your region, because that is what the IRS examples treat as appropriate data. For executive pay nationally, Candid is the broadest. For staff roles, a regional survey from your state association or a regional HR group is usually closer. Participating first cuts the price.
Does a small nonprofit need a salary survey?
Not for executive pay if annual gross receipts, including contributions, are under $1 million. The regulation says data on compensation paid by three comparable organizations in the same or similar communities for similar services is enough. You can average gross receipts over the three prior years to test the $1 million line.
Can a nonprofit use for-profit salary data?
Yes. Treasury Regulation 53.4958-6 names compensation paid by similarly situated organizations, both taxable and tax-exempt, for functionally comparable positions as relevant comparability data. A finance manager or IT lead competes with for-profit employers for the same people, so market data that includes them is often the more honest benchmark.
Do nonprofits have to post salary ranges?
Yes, where a state pay transparency law applies. These laws cover employers by headcount and location, not by tax status, so a nonprofit hiring in Colorado, California, Washington, New York, Illinois and the other covered states must post a good faith range in the job ad just as a company would.
Is nonprofit salary data on Form 990 accurate?
It is accurate for the people it covers, because it is filed under penalty of perjury, but it covers very few people. Form 990 lists officers and directors, key employees above $150,000 of reportable compensation and the five highest paid others above $100,000. A program coordinator or development associate almost never appears.
Current ranges for every role, not one report a year
Price nonprofit staff roles by metro, keep one band structure for the whole team, and post compliant ranges.
Keep going
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Candid compensation report pricing
What the $449 and $1,199 licenses buy, and what they miss.
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Nonprofit executive compensation
The rebuttable presumption, step by step.
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WageList for nonprofits
Salary benchmarking a board can approve.
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Nonprofit CEO salary as a percentage of budget
Why no percentage rule exists, and what the IRS tests instead.