Survey of nonprofit groups seeks compensation data

8/20/2012
BY KATE GIAMMARISE
BLADE STAFF WRITER

The Toledo Community Foundation and the Center for Nonprofit Resources are seeking information from local nonprofit groups for an annual survey.

The survey is aimed at helping nonprofit groups and boards of directors make decisions about compensation by collecting data on salaries and benefits.

Joanne Olnhausen, communications officer for the foundation, said the group regularly gets requests from board members and executives of nonprofit groups for comparable salaries.

Additionally, she said, nonprofit organizations are required to tell the IRS every year whether they have set salaries for their key employees and leadership using comparability data.

No other organization locally is compiling this data for nonprofit organizations, she said.

The survey data will allow groups to make more informed decisions about salaries, said Kate Smith, associate director of the Center for Nonprofit Resources.

"If a board wants to know what an executive director is making for a nonprofit environmental group with a budget under $500,000, they'll be able to find that out," Ms. Smith said.

Last year's survey collected data from 97 local organizations; the median annual operating budget for participating groups was $727,000. Median chief executive salary was $64,251.

Respondents were from organzations in the social service, health care, education, arts, environmental, and community-development fields.

The deadline to complete this year's survey is Friday; a report on the data is expected to be available in October.

For more information about the survey, visit www.c4npr.org/main/compensationbenefitssurvey/.