Grant Manager Salaries Make Small Gains; Wide Gender Gap Persists
By Alex Daniels
Senior Editor, Foundations
July 27, 2020 | Read Time: 1 minute
Grant managers’ salaries rose 8 percent over the past three years in nominal terms but inched up only slightly when adjusted for inflation, according to a survey released Wednesday.
The median pay for a grant manager was $76,000, according to a survey conducted in late 2019 by PEAK Grantmaking, a membership organization of grant managers. That’s an increase over the $70,000 that the group reported in 2016, when it was called Grant Managers Network.
Even though grants management is a woman-dominated profession — 80 percent of the respondents to PEAK’s survey were women — they still trailed men in compensation. Male grant managers in supervisory roles were paid nearly $108,000 on average, compared with $98,000 for their female counterparts.
The survey included responses from 634 people. Because foundations vary in size and organization, the title “grant manager” is nebulous. The survey included responses from people with a variety of titles, including database manager, grants specialist, data analyst, operations manager, and vice president for knowledge and learning.
