What Are Nonprofit Professionals Worth?

When my son was about seven years old, he asked me how long I was in college. When I told him eight years, he was astonished. “I can’t believe you went to college for eight years to be a volunteer!”

I was working at Volunteers of America at the time, and I got a great chuckle at his confusion. He didn’t understand that I got paid to do a job. But this interaction highlights a real conflict in the nonprofit sector – the undervaluing of nonprofit staff.  Following are the biggest mistakes that nonprofits make when determining pay for employees:

Believing staff are motivated only by your mission

One of my biggest frustrations is when a Board of Directors made up of individuals with more than moderate means thinks it is OK to pay staff salaries or wages that are under market-value for the role and level of responsibility. This error in judgment seems to reflect a misalignment of perceived employee motivation and the value of the role.

It is a common belief that those who get into nonprofit work are not motivated by money, or to be more precise, that they shouldn’t be motivated by money. After all, the whole point of nonprofits is altruism, right?

I don’t believe it is greedy to care about your income. ALL people are motivated by financial security and being able to support their families. ALL people are motivated by being compensated in a way that is fair and reflects their value to the organization.

It is true that most nonprofit professionals choose this line of work because they are motivated by finding meaning in how they spend their day. But when a Board of Directors believes that “feeling good” is adequate compensation, they are doing a disservice to the organization’s employees and to the mission itself.

The best at anything will always have options. That means the best nonprofit leaders will be scouted – for both nonprofit and for-profit jobs. And don’t you want the best serving your mission? Pay people what they deserve, not what you can get away with, and you will attract the best and earn greater loyalty.

Nonprofit employees are often overworked and under-resourced. If they are being underpaid, burnout and resume updating will happen that much faster.

Nonprofits need to spare every dollar to serve the mission

I understand the desire to be budget conscious and wanting as much money as possible to serve the mission. The greatest resource in serving your mission, however, is your employees. Your mission deserves the best and that requires an investment in attracting and maintaining the best staff.

It might seem like paying the least amount possible for a position is being a good steward of donor dollars, but consider this:

Low salaries lead to hiring inexperienced staff who require a lot of training and are more likely to leave once they get the experience needed to make more money elsewhere. Underpaying staff leads to high turnover, which means that the organization’s leadership is spending time on constantly recruiting and training new staff instead of on strategy and generating resources. It can take six months to a year to get an inexperienced staff person trained to work independently and at full productivity. But, instead of investing in hiring experienced staff or paying competitive salaries, many nonprofits fall into the inefficiency nightmare of high turnover in the name of being good stewards of donor dollars. Organizations in this cycle have a hard time becoming stable and sustainable.

Could your staff be clients? When the organization’s mission is to help clients achieve a living wage but its own staff doesn’t make a living wage, the organization needs to serve its staff first. This is living the mission, starting at the source.

Wise Resource Development specializes in recruiting nonprofit professionals. Contact us today for a consultation.