Dearth of Women in Top Nonprofit Jobs Means Weaker Charities and Fewer Gifts, Survey Finds

Colette Allen, a big-gifts fundraiser at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry, was working at a human-services charity near Atlanta when she started noticing that the women who worked for the charity were not taken as seriously as the men.

So she complained to a female colleague. “She told me, ‘You have to learn to hoop-skirt’ when you’re dealing with the men,” says Ms. Allen.

What that meant, she says: “batting my eyelashes and acting stupid. I was stunned when she said that.”

Ms. Allen’s lessons in “hoop-skirting” came more than two decades ago. But even in these presumably more egalitarian times, female nonprofit workers say they think a shortage of women in CEO jobs and board seats at the largest nonprofits may be sapping donations and limiting organizations’ impact in achieving their missions.

That is the key finding of a poll of 650 nonprofit workers, commissioned by The Chronicle and New York University’s George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising.

The study, conducted last month, also revealed widespread ambition: Fifty-seven percent of women who were not already CEOs said they aspire to lead a nonprofit.

But the survey found that of those who don’t want the job, the reasons aren’t what many people think—like a distaste for fundraising or a lack of confidence.

Instead, 55 percent cited the time commitment and 44 percent cited the stress involved in leading a nonprofit.

Among the survey’s findings:

• Forty-four percent of female workers from nonprofits with $25-million or more in annual revenue think their organizations favor men over equally qualified women for leadership roles.
• Nearly half of women believe their organizations would better accomplish their missions if they had more females on their boards. Even more—nearly 60 percent—of women who work at the largest nonprofits believe that to be the case.
• Forty percent of women at large nonprofits said their organizations do not put as much effort into identifying and soliciting affluent women as it does men, causing their nonprofits to miss out on money that may have been donated to their causes. Thirty-six percent of women at large organizations said wealthy female donors were not as respected as their male peers.

The survey of 644 women who work full-time at nonprofits nationwide was conducted by Harris Poll. Sixty-two percent of the women who took the poll said they have worked in the nonprofit world for 10 years or more.

See more of what women said about the gender gap in fundraising and leadership in this infographic (PDF)

More-Loyal Donors

Debra Mesch, director of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University, says the neglect of women as potential donors and board members echoes her research.

Women, she has found, “are not considered as major donors or perceived to be the decision makers.”

That’s a mistake, she says, because women tend to be much more loyal donors than men and often are better at asking their networks of women for gifts.

“We certainly see that in many studies there are financial gains for organizations when more women are on the board,” she says.

Male board members, she says, often say they want to recruit more female trustees. But she is not convinced they are taking steps to find them.

“I don’t think it’s anything insidious, that they don’t want women on the board,” she says.

Male board members “just don’t understand what it takes and why it’s important and how to do it.”

Similar biases persist in choosing female leaders, say experts.

People who make hiring decisions tend to gravitate toward candidates who are like them, says Jan Masaoka, chief executive of the California Association of Nonprofits. Because boards are largely male, the leaders those boards choose are more likely to be men.

“Boards will often spend a lot of time on the desired profile of the type of person they want in terms of skills and professional background,” says Ms. Masaoka, author of The Nonprofit’s Guide to Human Resources.

“Then they’ll turn around and hire the people they like, and they ignore the profile.”

Young and Confident

While men lead many large nonprofits, the number of women available for the role is growing fast, says Naomi Levine, executive director of the Heyman Center.

And that is likely to continue as more women pursue advanced education in nonprofit leadership: Roughly 90 percent of the center’s students are female, she notes, adding that that is not necessarily good for women.

“While I am delighted that so many women have entered the nonprofit world and the prospects of them moving up the leadership ladder are real, I worry that the loss of the men in this field is not a healthy one,” says Ms. Levine.

“Why are so many women attracted to this field and why are so many men leaving it? These are questions nonprofit organizations should begin to discuss.”

The new survey found that the vast majority of women at nonprofits feel well equipped to take on the duties of the CEO role: Only 7 percent of those polled said they didn’t think they could handle it.

Younger women were the most ambitious of those surveyed: Seventy-two percent of those under 35 said they wanted to be a leader.

But older women were less likely to want the job, with only 30 percent of those 55 or older setting their sights on a CEO chair.

Feeling Invisible

Female nonprofit veterans say they see the drive and confidence in their younger co-workers.

When Ms. Allen, 65, entered the work force, “I tended to just try to dig in and learn as much as I could over time. But young women today, they’re very focused on where they want to be.”

“They have a plan, and they’re moving in that direction,” the nonprofit veteran notes. “I don’t see anything wrong with that.”

But the ambitious women tracked by the new survey still work in a world in which discrimination, whether overt or subtle, is likely to shape their career trajectories.

Carla Hill is 67 and chief executive of the West Michigan Symphony. But a decade ago when she worked as a fundraiser for a charity that helped disabled people, she often felt invisible—except when the members of the group’s all-male, “good-old-boy, backslapping” board were flirting with her.

“It wasn’t just me,” she says. “That’s how they treated all women who worked there.”

When Ms. Hill spoke to her boss, he told her he couldn’t do anything about the board’s treatment of women.

“I enjoyed the work, but there were times when I felt pretty vulnerable,” she says. “I never knew what to expect, so I finally resigned.”

At the symphony, she reports to a board that is a fairly even mix of men and women.

By contrast, Betsey Fortlouis, 35, executive director of Camp Corral, a nonprofit summer camp for children of American soldiers wounded or killed in action, says she’s never been discriminated against in her nonprofit career because of her gender. Yet she has picked up on some disturbing patterns.

About a decade ago, during her tenure as a vice president at an animal-welfare group, she noticed that although most of the 500 or so employees were women, almost all of the top jobs were held by men.

Most upsetting, says Ms. Fortlouis, were the pay gaps between men’s and women’s salaries on the group’s informational tax returns.

“The fact that that was OK was telling,” she says. “You hear about things like that, but you don’t think it’s that prevalent.”

Money Matters

While many experts have suggested that women enter the nonprofit world in part because they value time off over salary, that’s not true for most women, the poll found.

SOURCE: Harris Poll for The Chronicle of Philanthropy and George H. Heyman Jr. Center for Philanthropy and Fundraising at New York University

When asked to choose between a raise and more time off, nearly 70 percent said they would prefer more money.

Yet the study also found that many women hold attitudes that make attaining higher pay harder:

• Slightly less than half said they negotiated when offered the starting salary at their current jobs.
• Roughly the same share of women said they would be very or extremely likely to ask for a raise if they felt their pay was too low.

Women’s reluctance to haggle for money is a common problem, says Ms. Mesch: “They don’t want to be self-promotional, they don’t want to go in and say, ‘I deserve this.’ Women are socialized to feel very uncomfortable doing that sort of thing.”

And although only 4 percent of women cited low pay as a reason they did not want to lead a charity, experts say low salaries, even for CEO jobs, is driving women to bigger nonprofits or outside the charity world.

“Low wages at nonprofits and the expectation that women will accept low wages is a huge issue, period,” says Frances Kunreuther, co-director of the Building Movement Project, which seeks to build social-change organizations.

Boards, she says, should be concerned that the next generation of female leaders may not stick around for the top jobs.

“Most boomers who work in the nonprofit sector, we could buy houses or an apartment. We could expect a middle-class lifestyle,” says Ms. Kunreuther. “But it’s very different and very difficult for younger people today.”