The Nonprofit Gender Pay Gap: What 161,305 Executive Compensation Records Show

Across 161,305 executive compensation records from tax year 2024 IRS Form 990 filings, women nonprofit executives earn a median of $100,598. Men earn $109,203. That is a gap of $8,605 at the median, or 92 cents per dollar. If this were the full story, the nonprofit sector would look relatively equitable compared to the national average. Pew Research Center reported in 2025 that women earned 85 cents per dollar across all industries, and the Institute for Women's Policy Research found that full-time, year-round working women earned 80.9 cents per dollar in 2024, the widest gap since 2016.

It is not the full story. The 92-cent figure is an aggregate across six executive titles (CEO, Executive Director, CFO, COO, President, and Vice President), all organization sizes, all sectors, and all states. It treats a $35,000 Executive Director at a rural arts nonprofit the same as a $3 million CEO at a national hospital system. When you break the number apart by any of these dimensions, the picture changes significantly.

The mean pay gap tells a different story entirely. Women's mean compensation is $157,050 compared to $229,436 for men. That is 68 cents per dollar, not 92. The divergence between median and mean means the gap is concentrated at the top of the pay scale. Among the highest-compensated executives, men earn far more than women. The mean gap ($72,386) is more than eight times the median gap ($8,605).

The overall gap also obscures a reversal at the bottom. At organizations with budgets under $1 million, women executives actually earn 56% more than men at the median ($54,553 vs. $35,000). This reversal disappears at $1 million in revenue and the gap widens steadily with organizational size. By the time you reach organizations with $25 million or more in revenue, women earn 77 cents per dollar. The 92-cent headline is, in effect, an average of a world where women earn more at small organizations and substantially less at large ones.

This analysis uses gender inferred from first names via Social Security Administration baby name data, filtered to 80% or higher confidence. The methodology is consistent with published academic research on inferring gender from administrative records, but it has limitations (discussed in the methodology section below). The data covers six executive titles identified from IRS Form 990 Part VII: Chief Executive Officer, Executive Director, Chief Financial Officer, Chief Operating Officer, President, and Vice President. Board-only titles are excluded.

Among 23,174 nonprofit CEOs, women earn a median of $182,322 compared to $262,572 for men. That is 69 cents per dollar, a gap of $80,250 at the median. The CEO title shows the widest pay gap of any executive title in the nonprofit sector, and it is wider than the national average across all industries.

The gap is consistent across the entire CEO pay distribution but widens at higher percentiles. At the 10th percentile, men earn 26% more than women ($69,098 vs. $54,903). At the 25th percentile, the gap grows to 34% ($144,914 vs. $108,500). At the 75th percentile, it reaches 59% ($477,901 vs. $300,535). And at the 90th percentile, male CEOs earn nearly twice what female CEOs earn: $998,915 compared to $501,043, a gap of $497,872.

This pattern, where the gap widens at higher compensation levels, is sometimes called a "glass ceiling" effect in compensation research. It suggests that whatever factors drive the pay gap become more pronounced as compensation increases. At the very top of the nonprofit CEO pay scale, the positions leading billion-dollar hospital systems, national advocacy organizations, and major research universities, men hold a disproportionate share of those roles and earn substantially more when they do.

The mean CEO compensation tells an even starker story. Women CEOs have a mean total compensation of $282,885 compared to $532,928 for men. That is 53 cents per dollar at the mean, meaning the average male CEO earns nearly twice the average female CEO. The $250,000 gap at the mean is three times the $80,250 gap at the median, confirming that the highest-paid CEO positions are heavily concentrated among men.

Executive Directors, the most common executive title in the dataset with 59,143 records, show a narrower but still significant gap. Male EDs earn a median of $97,499 compared to $80,579 for women, a ratio of 83 cents per dollar. At the 90th percentile, male EDs earn 36% more ($242,515 vs. $177,700). The narrower gap among Executive Directors may partly reflect the smaller organizational sizes where ED is the top title, which limits the range of possible compensation and compresses the distribution.

CFOs ($178,011 women vs. $222,271 men, 80 cents) and COOs ($172,660 women vs. $201,563 men, 86 cents) fall between CEOs and EDs. The C-suite titles consistently show women earning between 69 and 86 cents per dollar, with the gap widest at the top of the hierarchy.

The gender pay gap varies enormously by sector. Healthcare shows the widest gap of any sector, with women executives earning a median of $171,070 compared to $411,664 for men. That is 42 cents per dollar. The $240,594 gap in healthcare is nearly 28 times the overall median gap of $8,605. This disparity is likely driven by male dominance in the highest-paid hospital system CEO and CMO roles. Healthcare is a sector where the largest organizations (major hospital systems, academic medical centers) have compensation packages that can reach into the millions, and those top roles remain disproportionately male.

Animal-Related organizations show the second-widest gap at 63 cents per dollar ($64,950 women vs. $103,418 men). This sector includes the largest national animal welfare organizations, humane societies, and wildlife conservation groups. The sample skews toward smaller organizations where men in leadership tend to lead the larger, better-resourced groups.

Housing & Shelter (70 cents), Community Improvement (71 cents), and Education (73 cents) round out the sectors with the widest gaps. In each of these sectors, the pattern is similar: women hold a significant share of leadership positions but earn measurably less than their male counterparts, particularly at the larger organizations within the sector.

Human Services, the largest sector by record count with over 18,000 executive records, shows a gap of 75 cents per dollar ($93,808 women vs. $124,866 men). This sector includes food banks, homeless shelters, youth development organizations, and social services agencies. It is one of the most female-dominated sectors in nonprofit leadership, yet the pay gap persists. Philanthropy & Voluntarism (78 cents) and Science & Technology (78 cents) show narrower but still measurable gaps.

The healthcare gap deserves additional context. The nonprofit healthcare sector includes everything from small community clinics to billion-dollar hospital systems. The women earning $171,070 at the median may disproportionately be leading mid-size clinics, behavioral health organizations, and community health centers. The men earning $411,664 at the median are more likely to be leading large hospital systems, where CEO compensation routinely exceeds $1 million. The sector gap reflects not just within-role pay differences but also differences in which types of healthcare organizations women and men tend to lead.

This pattern, where women are concentrated in smaller organizations within a sector while men lead the larger ones, appears across multiple sectors. It is a form of occupational segregation that the top-line sector data captures even if it cannot fully explain the cause. Whether the gap results from hiring decisions, pipeline effects, negotiation dynamics, or some combination is a question the compensation data alone cannot answer.

Organization size is one of the most powerful predictors of the gender pay gap in the nonprofit sector. At organizations with budgets under $1 million, women executives earn a median of $54,553 compared to $35,000 for men. That is 156 cents per dollar: women earn substantially more. This reversal is present across nearly 77,000 records and is not a statistical anomaly.

Several factors likely contribute to women's advantage at small organizations. The President and Vice President titles, which are disproportionately male, often represent board officers at small organizations who receive modest compensation or serve part-time. This pulls the male median downward at small organizations. Additionally, women make up 62% of Executive Director positions, and the ED title is the most common leadership role at small nonprofits. In the under-$1M tier, women are more likely to be the primary, full-time, paid leader, while men in the dataset may include part-time board-affiliated officers.

At the $1M to $5M tier, the gap reverses. Men earn $138,660 at the median compared to $127,200 for women: 92 cents per dollar. This is the inflection point where the dynamics that favor women at small organizations give way to the dynamics that favor men at larger ones. The $1M to $5M tier represents 40,654 records and is the largest tier after the under-$1M group.

From $5M onward, the gap widens steadily. At $5M to $10M, women earn 87 cents per dollar ($173,769 vs. $200,910). At $10M to $25M, it is also 87 cents ($203,418 vs. $234,562). And at $25M and above, women earn 77 cents per dollar: $300,424 compared to $390,797, a gap of $90,373.

The pattern suggests that the factors driving the gender pay gap are amplified by organizational scale. Larger organizations have more complex compensation structures, more frequent use of executive compensation consultants, larger boards with more influence over pay decisions, and wider ranges of possible compensation. In these environments, the mechanisms that produce pay gaps (whether they involve negotiation dynamics, benchmarking practices, or selection effects) have more room to operate.

It is also worth noting the representation shift. At small organizations, women are slightly more numerous than men in executive roles. At $25M+ organizations, men outnumber women by 60% to 40%. The pay gap at the top is compounded by the representation gap: not only do women earn less at large organizations, there are fewer of them in executive positions to begin with. The result is that the total compensation flowing to male executives at large nonprofits is substantially greater than the total flowing to female executives.

Geographic variation in the nonprofit gender pay gap is substantial. Virginia has the widest state-level gap among states with sufficient data (100+ records per gender), with women earning a median of $119,635 compared to $176,702 for men: 68 cents per dollar. The $57,067 gap in Virginia is more than six times the national median gap of $8,605.

Virginia's position is likely influenced by its proximity to Washington, D.C. The D.C. metropolitan area is home to many of the nation's largest advocacy organizations, trade associations, and policy groups. These tend to be large organizations with high executive compensation, and as the data shows, larger organizations have wider gender pay gaps. D.C. itself shows a gap of 87 cents per dollar ($221,244 women vs. $254,286 men), though the absolute pay levels are the highest in the nation for both genders. Maryland (84 cents) also appears in the top 10 widest gaps, completing the D.C. corridor pattern.

Georgia (73 cents), Kansas (72 cents), and South Carolina (75 cents) round out the states with the widest gaps. These states have smaller nonprofit sectors with fewer very large organizations, which means the gap may be more influenced by a smaller number of high-paying positions. North Carolina (81 cents), Michigan (85 cents), and New York (85 cents) also show measurable gaps, though New York's high absolute pay levels ($142,550 women vs. $167,853 men) mean the dollar gap is among the largest in the country at $25,303.

The state-level data should be interpreted with some caution. State comparisons reflect the mix of organization sizes, sectors, and titles within each state, not just within-role pay differences. A state with many large healthcare systems (where the gap is widest) will show a wider overall gap than a state dominated by small human services organizations. The state-level figures are useful for understanding broad geographic patterns, but they do not control for the organizational characteristics that drive much of the variation.

California, the state with the most nonprofit executive records, shows a relatively narrow gap of 94 cents per dollar ($110,500 women vs. $117,668 men). California's large and diverse nonprofit sector, combined with state-level pay equity legislation, may contribute to the narrower gap. It is worth noting that Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Minnesota, the three states where women earn more, have all enacted or strengthened pay transparency laws in recent years. The federal government, where salaries are public, has narrowed its gender pay gap to approximately 7%. While correlation does not prove causation, the pattern is consistent with research suggesting that salary transparency creates pressure for more equitable pay practices.

Women hold 62.4% of Executive Director positions (36,927 of 59,143 records) and 57.8% of COO positions (3,700 of 6,405). They hold nearly half of CFO positions (48.9%) and CEO positions (45.7%). But they are significantly underrepresented in the President title (31.7%) and the Vice President title (39.1%).

The title distribution matters because it compounds the pay gap. The Executive Director title, where women are most represented, is also the lowest-paid of the six titles at the median ($80,579 for women, $97,499 for men). The President and Vice President titles, where men are most represented, have unusual pay distributions because they often include board-affiliated officers. But the CEO title, the highest-paid and most strategically important role, has 54.3% men, and those men earn 44% more at the median than their female counterparts.

The concentration of women in the Executive Director role at smaller organizations is a significant structural factor. Executive Director is the most common title at organizations under $5 million in revenue. As organizations grow and adopt more corporate governance structures, the top title shifts from Executive Director to CEO. Since women hold a larger share of ED positions and a smaller share of CEO positions, the shift from ED to CEO titles as organizations grow also represents a shift from female-majority to male-majority leadership.

Candid's 2025 Nonprofit Compensation Report found that women held 58% of nonprofit CEO positions nationally, a higher figure than the 45.7% in this dataset. The difference may reflect methodological choices: Candid's definition of CEO may include Executive Directors at organizations where that is the top title, while this analysis treats CEO and Executive Director as separate categories. When the two titles are combined, women hold 57.7% of the top leadership positions, closer to Candid's figure.

The data clearly shows that men earn more than women across most dimensions of nonprofit executive compensation. But the causes are not necessarily straightforward, and several explanations deserve honest consideration. Compensation data alone cannot distinguish between pay discrimination and other factors that produce disparate outcomes.

These factors are real and likely explain some portion of the gap. Academic research on gender pay gaps in other sectors has generally found that controlling for occupation, industry, hours worked, and experience reduces the gap but does not eliminate it. The residual gap, the portion that remains after accounting for observable differences, is typically interpreted as the combined effect of discrimination, negotiation dynamics, and unmeasured factors.

Negotiation dynamics may play a specific role in the nonprofit sector. A 2021 study published in the Review of Accounting Studies examined 21,764 nonprofit executive compensation records and found that the gender pay gap widens by 5.2% in competitive labor markets where there is more room for negotiation. The same study found that female board representation reduces the gap by 3.2%, and that organizations more reliant on donor funding show narrower gaps, possibly because donor scrutiny creates pressure for equitable pay practices.

The Candid 2025 Nonprofit Compensation Report, the largest study of its kind with 217,556 records, found that women CEOs earn 73 cents per dollar after controlling for organization type, budget size, and geographic region. Notably, the gap at the largest nonprofits (budgets over $50 million) has actually widened: women CEOs at those organizations earn 75 cents per dollar, down from 82 cents in Candid's earlier analyses. Women lead 58% of nonprofits with budgets under $250,000 but only 31% of those with budgets over $50 million.

That said, the scale and consistency of the gap across virtually every dimension of the data (title, sector, size, state, percentile) make it difficult to attribute entirely to compositional factors. A gap that appeared only in one sector or one title could plausibly be explained by sector-specific dynamics. A gap that appears everywhere, widening at higher compensation levels and at larger organizations, points to structural factors that operate across the sector.

Gender in this analysis is inferred from first names using Social Security Administration baby name frequency data. Each name receives a confidence score based on historical gender association. Only records scoring 80% or higher are included, covering 161,305 of the total executive compensation records. This method is consistent with published academic research on inferring gender from administrative records, but it has important limitations.

Despite these limitations, the dataset is one of the largest gender-disaggregated analyses of nonprofit executive compensation available. The 161,305 records span every state, every major nonprofit sector, and organizations from under $100,000 to over $10 billion in revenue. The patterns in the data are consistent with findings from other researchers, including Candid, GuideStar (now Candid), the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and academic studies of nonprofit compensation.

The results describe population-level patterns in compensation. They should not be used to make inferences about any individual executive's pay, gender identity, or whether they are appropriately compensated. The value of this data is in revealing the shape and magnitude of systemic patterns that are otherwise invisible at the organizational level.

For nonprofit boards, these findings provide a benchmark for evaluating whether their organization's compensation practices show patterns consistent with the broader sector. For policymakers, they quantify a gap that has been documented in smaller studies but never at this scale from public IRS data. For the sector as a whole, they add 161,305 data points to a conversation that has often relied on surveys with much smaller sample sizes.

You can explore the complete data tables, including breakdowns by title, sector, budget size, and state, on our Nonprofit Gender Pay Gap insights page. Every statistic in this article is derived from IRS Form 990 filings for tax year 2024.