Charity’s Glass Ceiling

Salary gap persists for women in nonprofit organizations

Margaret Gibelman, a Yeshiva University professor, has studied the nonprofit world’s glass ceiling for more than

two decades — beginning, she says, when she bumped into it herself.

In the 1980s, she served as the associate executive director of a national nonprofit organization. She worked alongside a male colleague who had the same job title, though there were stark differences between them. She had a larger scope of responsibility, she says, and, unlike him, held a doctorate.

And, she eventually learned, the two had another difference: He made $27,000 per year more than she did.

After trying unsuccessfully to get her organization’s leaders to do something about the salary gap, she left the group — and filed a complaint with the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. Eventually, she says, her former employer settled with her out of court. “I went on to better things,” says Ms. Gibelman, who now runs Yeshiva’s doctoral program in social welfare.

Although Ms. Gibelman’s experience occurred a generation ago, women in nonprofit organizations today are still stymied by similar salary disparities. The gaps are particularly puzzling in light of the fact that 70 percent of nonprofit workers are female, according to figures released last year by the Independent Sector and the Urban Institute.

Survey after survey shows that female executives and fund raisers make less than males in similar jobs at comparable organizations, and that women, while heading the majority of all charities, are far less likely to lead the largest ones. In one of the most comprehensive surveys ever conducted, GuideStar, a nonprofit group that distributes information about charities, examined 65,000 federal charity information filings to determine that, among leaders of groups with annual budgets between $25-million and $50-million, men’s median salary was 24 percent higher than women’s. The disparity is even greater at bigger groups: Men’s salaries were 46 percent higher at groups with budgets of more than $50-million. (For more details on what salary studies have found, see box on Page 48.)

Charity leaders, recruiters, and academic researchers say the gap persists for many reasons, some endemic to the nonprofit world. Among them:

• The likelihood that women, more than men, will interrupt their careers for child care, which can slow down their advancement.
• A lingering sense, rooted in the history of philanthropy as a volunteer enterprise, that charities perform “women’s work” — which, like other traditionally female professions, tends to be underpaid.
• The fact that most trustees, especially at big organizations, are men, and often men from traditional backgrounds who may feel greater kinship with male executives.
• A difference in the way many men and women approach salary issues with their employers, with women pushing less aggressively for higher pay and being more willing to trade other perks, such as flexible schedules, for dollars.

As charities tighten their belts, compensation demands can pit budget-conscious organizations against their employees — but paying female workers less than they’re worth, even if they are willing to take thinner paychecks, say charity managers and recruiters, is both illegal and can increase turnover.

Since the strides made by women in the 1980s, pay equity and the glass ceiling have fallen off the national nonprofit agenda, says Colette Murray, chairwoman of the Association of Fundraising Professionals, and head of a recruiting company in San Diego that serves nonprofit clients. “We’ve kind of stopped beating that drum lately,” she says. “We need to start beating it again.”

‘You’re Not Imagining It’

Behind data about the disparities in pay between men and women lie plenty of tales of unfairness and illegal discrimination.

Eileen M. Murray, a 20-year nonprofit veteran who serves as director of the Foundation of Research and Education, the charitable affiliate of the American Health Information Management Association in Chicago, says she once left a nonprofit position because her employer refused to give her a raise that would have brought her salary in line with the market. To replace her, she says, the organization then hired a man who had significantly fewer qualifications than she had, and paid him more money. In addition, she says, a friend lost a nonprofit-job offer over her salary demand — and then saw the position go to a comparably qualified man, for $8,000 more than she had requested.

“Everybody’s got stories like that — where you’re not imagining it,” Ms. Murray says.

It shouldn’t be surprising to see the nonprofit arena facing the same problems as other fields, says Deborah Chalfie, senior counsel at the National Women’s Law Center, in Washington, which works on pay-equity policy. “The fact that you see a pay gap in an area where women dominate is not unusual,” she says. For example, she says, male nurses often make more money than their much more numerous female peers.

The law, says Ms. Chalfie, both upholds the principle of pay equity and makes it difficult for employees to gather information about their worth in the market: The federal Equal Pay Act of 1963 forbids discrimination by gender in compensating employees, and yet, she says, workers have no protection against an employer who, for example, may fire them for discussing their salaries. American women overall made 77.7 cents for every dollar American men made last year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics — largely, Ms. Chalfie says, because most women still work in lower-paid, female-dominated professions.

In addition, she notes, the world of charities — though it may pride itself on being progressive and humane — isn’t immune to the same prejudices of the wider world.

Women’s Work

Some charity leaders and academic researchers say the nonprofit world’s current problems with unequal pay can be traced back to the field’s roots in volunteerism.

Charities began as an extension of activities that women traditionally did at home, such as health care, child care, and teaching, says Teresa Odendahl, senior program officer at the Wyss Foundation, in Santa Fe, N.M., which supports environmental groups in the Rocky Mountains, and co-editor of the 1994 book Women & Power in the Nonprofit Sector. While women may choose charity work, she says, they are also prompted by society to enter the field — and since nonprofit work is lower paid than other industries, that prompting can amount to a form of discrimination. She says, “Some people say, ‘Oh, women like that kind of work. They’re suited to it.’”

Though many nonprofit workers of both sexes brush off any dissatisfaction with their pay by reminding themselves that they didn’t go into the field for money, that ethos can become a trap that dooms capable professionals to lower salaries than they deserve, suggests Ronnie J. Steinberg, a Vanderbilt University sociology professor who has studied pay equity in the nonprofit field.

“What is it about doing good that means you can’t be economically secure?” she asks. “There is this notion that you have traded off making money for doing something that is much more satisfying. Now, the notion that it’s satisfying to fund-raise, particularly during an economic downturn, is pretty absurd.”

Female charity workers may be especially willing to forgo creature comforts in the name of a good cause, says Janet A. Miner, director of development at Boston Lyric Opera and a 30-year veteran of arts, higher-education, and human-services organizations. “We will accept jobs that some men won’t accept,” she says. “We’ll accept the one-person office where we have to do our own secretarial tasks, while men will automatically ask for an administrative assistant as part of their package. Oftentimes, when you’re overseeing a staff, you’ll be paid more than if you’re the Lone Ranger.”

In her experience, women are more likely than men to back off from salary demands if an employer’s refusal appears to be the result of a charity’s overall financial difficulties, says Billie Sue Schulze, program director for the Kresge Foundation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities Initiative, in Atlanta. “We get real empathetic with the problems the institution is having, instead of being a little more assertive about it,” she says. “And in reality, we have paid the price for that.”

Female charity managers’ own backgrounds may also prevent them from pushing harder for high salaries and promotions. Many of the older baby boomers who now hold key positions at nonprofit organizations drew lessons from their families and communities that, even if the ideas were rejected, nevertheless shaped their expectations. In the 1960s, when Indiana nonprofit executive Paula Shively got married, her father warned her to always consider her husband’s job more important than her own. “He wasn’t a Neanderthal,” she says of her father. “That kind of thinking was just the way it was. That was the air that we breathed.”

Linda S. Davidson, associate vice president for development at the University of Tennessee, says she recently discussed her early career with a female colleague who is about the same age. “We were talking about how we didn’t negotiate salaries when we started out, and we didn’t know we could negotiate,” says Ms. Davidson, who entered the nonprofit field in 1976. “And her comment was, ‘We thought dealing with a salary was like buying groceries, not buying a car.’” (Ms. Davidson’s naiveté was reflected in her first nonprofit position: When she was hired as an annual-giving manager at the University of Idaho, she says, she took on both fund-raising duties and those of a recently departed secretary — and was paid less than the secretary had been making.)

If women’s expectations are often low, so, in many cases, are the salary offers that nonprofit employers make to them. Part of the reason for the low offers, many charity leaders and recruiters believe, is that men are more likely to arrive at the top levels of nonprofit groups from for-profit jobs (which generally command larger salaries) and women are more likely to have come up through the nonprofit ranks. This can perpetuate the cycle of women making less, they say, because salary history often determines initial salary offers.

“My job offers have been more based on what my prior salary was rather than what that position was really about,” says Ms. Schulze. “And that will just naturally put you a little behind, because as you move up, you’re not taking big leaps.”

Another factor that may hamper women’s earning power is loyalty, says Ruth H. Roy, executive director of Women in Development of Greater Boston. Ms. Roy, who previously recruited executives for nonprofit organizations, says that women may be more likely than men to stay longer at the same organizations — and may, for example, miss developing a variety of fund-raising skills at other charities that could enhance their worth in the job market.

Women as Negotiators

When it comes time to bargain with an employer over pay, women are more likely to sell themselves short, says Hugh A. Mallon III, head of Executive Compensation Concepts, a consultant in Baltimore that works with nonprofit clients. “I have found that most of the females that I deal with are fairly enamored with the position and don’t push the envelope to say, ‘I think my compensation is unfair,’” he says. “Half the time, they don’t even know what the value of their total compensation is.”

Indeed, say many charity leaders and recruiters, women often simply don’t negotiate for their pay as effectively as men do, and they often ask for less money than men do from the beginning.

“Men, more often than not, shoot harder from the first conversation when it comes to salary,” says Kristine Laping, senior vice president for development at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston. When she held the top fund-raising job at another Boston charity, she says, she hired a major-gifts officer, a long process that saw the group make offers to four candidates before filling the job. And of the four — which included two men and two women — both of the men asked for about $10,000 more than the women did.

The difference in approach, she says, doesn’t necessarily signal that men research their market value more thoroughly, but that women tend to undervalue their experience.

Making Choices

In fact, say some nonprofit managers, women may be more likely to undervalue each other’s experience, too. Ms. Miner says that, over the years, she has found it easier to negotiate compensation with male executive directors than with females.

“Sometimes women are our worst enemies when it comes to hiring other women,” she says. “We try to take what’s best for the organization into account, and usually that means being strict with compensation packages — rather than thinking, how can I best compensate an employee who’s going to be with me over time?”

Women from dual-income households, say charity leaders and recruiters, are often more likely to accept lower salaries than other females. Mr. Mallon says he has seen executive directors, usually nonbreadwinning women, turn down raises suggested by their boards because they don’t “need” the money and prefer that it be used to cover their charities’ other expenses. In those cases, he says, it’s hard to fault organizations for paying employees less than their market value.

Employees who accept salaries below their worth are making a choice, Mr. Mallon says. “Oftentimes, they love what they do more than they love the pay that’s given, and they accept it,” he says. “Now, is it the board’s problem if they don’t push for more money? No. If they want more money, they will ask for it.”

Nonsalary Perks

Instead of fatter paychecks, female employees may be more likely than their male peers to ask employers for nonpay perks, says Ms. Shively, executive director of ADEC, a charity in Elkhart, Ind., that serves clients with disabilities. “I’ve had women come in and say, ‘Instead of a raise this year, could I have another four or five days off?’” she says. “And I have never had a man say that.”

However, say other nonprofit managers, there’s a practical limit to how much nonsalary compensation an organization can fairly offer — or an employee should accept. “Money’s important,” says Ms. Miner. “You can only give so many additional comp days off.”

Even at a time when charities are struggling to stretch their budgets, they should never allow female employees to take less salary than they deserve, says Lisa A. Froemming, vice president for external affairs and advancement at the Milwaukee Public Museum. Aside from the legal issues, paying women less is shortsighted for nonprofit organizations, she says, because it breeds employee dissatisfaction and turnover — and exacts a price in productivity, donor relationships, and institutional knowledge. “The real cost of hiring employees is not what you pay them,” she says. “It’s what you put into them to develop them into leaders, and what it costs to replace them if they leave.

“Hiring somebody because they’re cheap,” she says, “will always come back to haunt you.”

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