Supporting Non-Profit Organizations Evaluate, Analyze, and Restructure their Compensation Models

Helping Organizations Create a Sustainable and Achievable Plan for Addressing Staff Compensation 

Over the last few years, The Ops Collective has worked with a number of organizations to help revamp their compensation models. The Ops Collective approaches all compensation work with the understanding that many nonprofit workers cannot afford basic living expenses, especially in areas where there is a high cost of living. This NonProfit Quarterly article, which has pulled together additional compensation data, says, “the statistics are even worse for nonprofit workers of color, women, and people with disabilities.” Our approach to compensation is rooted in aiming to achieve a thriving wage for all non profit workers.

The Ops Collective helped Organizations by:

• Creating an organization wide Compensation Philosophy, informed by the organization's values. 

• Creating transparent and comprehensive salary bands, based on both market data, and the organization's capacity for an increased budget. 

• Conducting an equity analysis to ensure staff salaries are incorporated within the new salary bands. 

• Preparing communication to staff about the process. 

• Creating and/or revising promotion, cost of living adjustment (COLA), merit, and bonus policies. 

Creating Policies 

Every engagement included conducting staff surveys, reviewing the organization’s existing people operations documents, and speaking with select staff in order to understand the organization’s status quo, and to hear directly from staff on their opinions, thoughts, and potential concerns related to compensation.

Those conversations helped inform the development of the compensation philosophy in addition to the promotion, merit and COLA policies. 

Market Data Analysis

The Ops Collective reviewed job descriptions at each organization, and used those descriptions to help find comparable positions in the market data sets. Using different compensation data sources (PRM, NonProfit Times, industry specific data sets, etc.), cost of living and minimum wage policies, and the MIT Living Wage Calculator, The Ops Collective created salary bands that not only reflected market data, but the organization’s budget and capacity for making compensation changes. The goal is to always ensure that not only are staff paid equitably and fairly, but also that the organization’s compensation is competitive, attracting and retaining strong, diverse teams, and that the organization can sustainably and responsibly make compensation changes based on their budgets. 

Outcomes of Our Work 

• Organizations understand their current salaries compared to market data. 

• Organizations create transparent compensation policies available to their staff. 

• Managers are trained in having conversations with their teams regarding promotions, merit increases, etc. 

• Organizations have a sustainable plan to adjust salaries year over year.