Nonprofit Salary Benchmarks
Is your nonprofit paying its leaders fairly? Look up CEO, executive director, CFO and other nonprofit salaries by state, metro area, cause area and budget size — built from public IRS Form 990 filings. Free, no login required.
Every number here summarizes what nonprofits reported on their public IRS Form 990 filings. Filings can contain errors and we don't certify any figure — for a decision that matters, check the organization's actual 990. How we build these benchmarks →
What you get
Free, interactive nonprofit pay benchmarks from public IRS filings.
Built from the public IRS Form 990 Part VII filings as the IRS publishes them.
Nonprofit salaries by role
Pick a leadership role to see median pay, percentile ranges, and how compensation scales with budget size across U.S. nonprofits.
- CEO / Executive Director salary
- Chief Administrative Officer salary
- Chief Business Officer salary
- Chief Development Officer salary
- Chief Education Officer salary
- Director of Facilities salary
- Chief Financial Officer salary
- Chief Human Resources Officer salary
- General Counsel salary
- Chief Marketing Officer salary
- Chief Operating Officer salary
- Director of Communications salary
- Director of Programs salary
- Chief Technology Officer salary
How we built these benchmarks
- Source: IRS Form 990 Part VII filings (the public disclosure of nonprofit officer pay).
- Positions classified by an AI model into 14 standard nonprofit leadership roles.
- Peer cells require at least 5 filings; smaller samples are suppressed.
- Latest data: September 2026.
What this data is — and isn't
These benchmarks summarize what organizations reported on their IRS Form 990 Part VII filings. We do not audit, verify, or certify any figure. Errors can enter in two places: the filing itself (filer mistakes, amended returns, unusual one-time payments reported as compensation) and our processing (we use an AI model to map reported titles to 14 standard roles, and automated parsing of IRS files; both can be wrong for any given record). Cells with fewer than 5 filings are never published. Figures typically lag today's market by one to three years, because that's when the underlying returns were filed.
Judge the raw data yourself. Every organization's actual filings are public — look any organization up by name or EIN at ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer or the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and read the Form 990, Part VII, yourself.
If you're setting executive pay: many boards document comparability data — including Form 990-derived benchmarks — under the IRS's rebuttable-presumption procedure (Treas. Reg. §53.4958-6). Kindora's benchmarks can be one input to that process. Whether any data is "appropriate data as to comparability" for your organization is a determination only your board and its advisors can make; we don't make it, and we don't certify these benchmarks for that or any purpose. This page isn't legal, tax, or compensation advice.
Think a figure is wrong? The filing itself is the authority — read it at the links above. You can also tell us at support@kindora.co.
Nonprofit salary questions, answered
How much does a nonprofit CEO or executive director make?+
Nonprofit CEO and executive director pay scales with the size of the organization. For nonprofits with $1M – $2.5M in annual expenses, the median total compensation is about $109,844, drawn from IRS Form 990 filings. Use the free calculator above to see the full pay range for your budget size, state, and cause area.
Where does this nonprofit salary data come from?+
Every figure comes from public IRS Form 990 filings, the annual returns nonprofits submit to the federal government. Kindora aggregates 342,927 reported compensation records for paid nonprofit leaders and refreshes them as new filings are released.
Is the nonprofit salary lookup free?+
Yes. Looking up CEO, executive director, CFO, and staff pay by budget size, state, and cause area is completely free, with no login required. Paid Kindora plans add deeper cuts like metro-area and sub-sector layering plus peer-organization detail.
What roles can I look up?+
CEO and executive director, chief financial officers, chief operating officers, development and fundraising directors, program directors, and other leadership roles nonprofits commonly report on their Form 990.
Ready to compare more?
The free public calculator covers all 50 states and 8 cause areas — and lets you layer them — in English or Spanish, no login required. A free account adds saved benchmarks and the side-by-side comparison studio. Paid plans add metro-area and sub-sector drill-downs, board-ready PDF exports, and the API/MCP integration.