Don't Lowball It: How Guidestar Can Help You Negotiate the Nonprofit Salary You Want

by Rosetta Thurman

categories: Job Hunt Strategy, Salaries & Benefits

Published May 20, 2009 @ 08:11AM PT

Many young professionals get freaked out by the idea of having to figure out the salary ranges for the nonprofit jobs they apply for. You don't want to ask for too much, but you definitely don't want to lowball it either. The goal in any salary negotiation is to obtain the target salary that you would need in order to accept the job. You don't want to accept the first number the organization throws out if it's too low for your needs. But you also don't want to come off as being uninformed about what your position is actually worth. Many job descriptions post a salary range in the ad, but if they don't, you'll have to do some sleuthing to find out what others are earning within the organization. At the very least, you want to be sure you're not asking for more money than the CEO.

Guidestar is a great website to check out the financial information for 1.8 million U.S. charities. Not only can you find out the budgets of these organizations, but you can also view salary data here, too. You can see the salaries of the highest paid employees at nonprofits by looking at their IRS Form 990s that are posted to the site. Usually the most common salary information listed is for the CEO or Executive Director, Deputy Director, Chief Financial Officer, and Development Director.

To get started using Guidestar's resources, you will need to:

1. Register for a free account at Guidestar.org
2. Search for the name of the nonprofit
3. Click on the "Form 990s and Docs" tab of the report
4. Click on the link to the 990 for the most recent year (top of the list)
5. A PDF will come up: page 1 will tell you how much assets the organization has
6. Scroll down to Part V-A, which will tell you the compensation of the CEO (if it is a few years old, calculate for a 3% increase over each subsequent year)
7. Scroll down to Schedule A - Part I, which will show you the compensation of the 5 highest paid employees, as well as how many employees make over $50,000

This obviously won't tell you exactly how much the nonprofit is willing to pay you for your skills and experience, but it does give you a clue as to how much they are compensating everyone else in the organization. If you do your research and find that no one in the organization makes more than $50,000 and your salary goal is $55K, you may be barking up the wrong tree. Do your homework, and you'll save yourself a lot of heartache when negotiating the nonprofit salary you want.