2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report: Is the gender pay gap for women CEOs narrowing?
Candid’s 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report data shows that women CEOs continued to face persistent gender pay gaps in 2024, especially at the largest organizations. Hear from women leaders about what needs to be done.
Candid’s 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report provides salaries and benefits data for 14 executive positions from the 2024 IRS Forms 990 and 990-EZ filings of nearly 120,000 tax-exempt organizations (excluding private foundations).
The median compensation for all executive positions—CEO/executive director and top administrative, business, development, education, facilities, financial, and HR jobs—has risen incrementally but steadily over the last five years. For women CEOs, however, the picture is mixed.
1. The gender pay gap for women nonprofit CEOs is stuck
According to Candid’s 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report, the overall gender pay gap in median CEO compensation has narrowed over the last decade. In 2024, women leaders earned 73 cents for every dollar men earned, compared with 69 cents in 2014.
Digging into the data, however, we find progress has slowed since 2021, when women CEOs’ median compensation reached 73 cents to every dollar. It fell back to 72 cents in 2022 and has stalled at 73 cents since 2023.
“The vast majority of the nonprofit workforce is female, and many of these women are the sector’s future leaders,” said Young-joo Lee, Ph.D., the Eileen Lamb O’Gara Chair in Women’s Philanthropy at Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. “When they see that being a woman still means a pay cut, it’s incredibly demotivating and demoralizing….You simply cannot expect their intrinsic motivation to outlast unfair compensation forever. Plus, the persistent pay gap creates a glaring contradiction: nonprofits can’t preach equity to the community while not practicing it in their own C-suite.”
YW Boston President and CEO Aba Taylor agreed: “[T]hese findings underscore the troubling reality that often our own institutions are not immune from the very inequities we work to address.”
2. The larger the nonprofit, the greater the gender pay gap
The gender pay gap is narrowing for small and midsize organizations, while widening at the largest organizations. In 2024, the median compensation for women CEOs of the smallest nonprofits (with budgets under $250,000) was 96 cents for every dollar men earned, up from 92 cents in 2014. By contrast, women CEOs of the largest organizations (with budgets over $50 million) earned a median 75 cents, down from 77 cents a decade before.
Source: 2026 Candid Nonprofit Compensation Report
“For generations, the nonprofit sector has asked women to lead the work of justice while refusing to pay them justly for doing it,” said Boston Women’s Fund CEO Natanja Craig Oquendo. “We invented a rule that said spending less on people proved we cared more about the mission—and then we called it accountability….It was a myth. And women leaders have been paying the price ever since.”
3. The larger the nonprofit, the smaller the share of women CEOs
One reason for the narrower gender pay gap at smaller nonprofits is that women make up the majority of CEOs of those organizations: the lower the budget range, the higher the percentage of women leaders. In 2014, women represented just 20% of the CEOs of the largest nonprofits, and while that share has gone up to 31%, that’s still half of the 58% to 62% share among CEOs of smaller organizations (with budgets of $500,000 or less).
“In our sector, CEO compensation often indicates funding stability,” noted Elizabeth Barajas-Román, president and CEO of Women’s Funding Network. “The fact that the largest nonprofits have both the fewest women CEOs and the widest pay gaps raises important questions about which organizations are being resourced to grow into the sector’s enduring institutions—and which are expected to deliver transformative outcomes without the same long-term investment.”
“The next step is to ask deeper questions,” Barajas-Román continued. “Gender is an important lens, but it’s incomplete. We also need to understand how race, sexual orientation, disability, geography, and other intersecting factors shape access to opportunity, power, and capital across the sector. That’s how we move from measuring inequities to building investment strategies that strengthen the leaders and organizations already driving change.”
Transparency, accountability, and sustained investment in women’s leadership
“This data is troubling, but unfortunately not surprising,” said Celiné Justice, Pivotal’s program strategy director. “Candid’s report is a timely reminder that closing the gender pay gap will require greater transparency, accountability, and sustained investment in women’s leadership.”
The women leaders we spoke with shared that view. Boards should regularly review executive compensation through an equity lens and seek greater transparency around executive compensation trends and stronger governance practices, said Taylor.
“I have also found that board gender diversity is a powerful catalyst for change,” said Lee. “Board gender diversity not only increases the likelihood of women being appointed as CEOs, but it also drives fairer, more equitable executive pay.”
“Why are we accepting a reality where the women leading this work cannot make ends meet on what we pay them?” asked Craig Oquendo. Still, she remained hopeful. “We are capable of reimagining, reinventing, and revisioning a sector that truly lives its values—and that work starts with how we treat the women leading it.”
Learn more about Candid’s 2026 Nonprofit Compensation Report and check out a sample report.
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