A lively group of more than 80 nonprofit executive directors, staff and board members, and funders gathered last week for a bird’s-eye view of regional nonprofit compensation and benefits trends.

InterSector, the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region and United Way Fox Cities co-hosted the event as collaborators on the 2019 Northeast Wisconsin Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Survey.

The overview oriented attendees to high-level survey results, which aggregated 155 responses received from nonprofit organizations of all sizes in 12 counties. As participants in the survey, many event attendees were pivotal in generating the data shared.

Several trends stood out:

• • • Women outnumber men 2-to-1 as executive directors. Female leaders are especially prevalent in nonprofits with budgets of less than $1 million.
    • On average and without accounting for education level, experience and tenure, male executive directors appear to earn more than female executive directors in 5 out of 6 budget ranges considered.
    • Average turnover rates for full-time and part-time employees were 20.8% and 34.4%, respectively.
    • 63% of respondents offer medical benefits. For dental and vision benefits, the figures are 54% and 36%, respectively.

“Nonprofit leaders across the region, and especially in the Fox Cities, have been calling for this information, so they were motivated to take part in the survey,” says InterSector project director Lisa Strandberg, who presented the overview. “The last local surveys were completed three or four years ago, and we’ve never had a region-wide survey focused on nonprofits. With nine partners co-investing on this work, we could share costs and generate a deeper pool of data than area nonprofits have ever seen.”

Beyond the Community Foundation for the Fox Valley Region and United Way Fox Cities, survey partners included the Oshkosh Area Community Foundation, Brown County United Way and the Nonprofit Impact Initiative, comprised of the Greater Green Bay Community Foundation, the Helen Daniels Bader Fund and RRF Foundation for Aging. The J. J. Keller Foundation, as underwriter of InterSector, also supported the survey.

Survey data is available to all on the InterSector website as a Tableau Public visualization. This interactive online tool has filters that allow users to customize their view of the data by budget size, number of employees, subsector and region.

In gratitude for their involvement, survey participants receive free access to an in-depth report and slide deck highlighting survey trends. Non-participants can purchase access to these supplemental tools for $49 – a nominal fee meant to honor the time that survey participants devoted to submitting their organizations’ data.

InterSector, a nonprofit capacity-building initiative launched by the J. J. Keller Foundation in November 2018, has undertaken the survey in response to the nonprofits it has served to date. The compensation and benefits survey covers the Green Bay, Fox Cities and Oshkosh markets, including Brown, Calumet, Door, Fond du Lac, Green Lake, Kewaunee, Oconto, Outagamie, Portage, Shawano, Waupaca, Waushara and Winnebago counties. For more information, contact InterSector project director Lisa Strandberg.