Are women leaders making progress in the nonprofit sector?

In recognition of Women’s History Month, here’s a look back at some articles we published in the past year about funding for nonprofits focused on women and girls, the advances women leaders are making in the sector, and the way forward.

Women leaders are slowly closing the gender pay gap

Women account for three-quarters of the U.S. nonprofit workforce. They’re still making incremental progress—leading more nonprofits and narrowing the gender pay gap.

2025 Nonprofit Compensation Report: Where do we stand? Candid’s data shows the pay gap for nonprofit and foundation CEOs has been slowly narrowing: Women leaders are paid 73 cents for each dollar a man earns, up from 69 cents in 2013. Yet, at organizations with budgets of over $50 million, the gap has widened, from 82 cents to the dollar to 75 cents.

Key takeaways from the 2025 Grantmaker Salary and Benefits report. According to the Council on Foundations’ annual data, women account for 63.8% of foundation CEOs, a slight increase from 62.6% in 2024. And the pay gap narrowed significantly, at least for CEOs: Women now earn 88% of what men earn, up from 83.5% in 2024.

Giving to nonprofits focused on women and girls is uneven

Recent data shows that, despite some gains, funding for organizations led by women and/or focused on women and girls remains limited, unstable, and unevenly distributed, with nonprofits led by women of color facing persistent disparities.

After the surge: Giving to women’s and girls’ organizations peaked in 2022, then plateaued. The Women’s Philanthropy Institute (WPI) found that, after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, donations to reproductive rights and advocacy organizations surged. Giving to organizations focused on women and girls jumped from nearly 1.9% between 2019 and 2021 to 2.18% in 2022. Yet, in 2023, it dropped back down to 2.04%. WPI director Jacqueline Ackerman notes that these organizations tend to rely on government grants and a few major philanthropists, making them particularly vulnerable to policy changes and the social, political, and economic climate.

Building a tool for the sector together: Co-creating as power sharing. When the Women’s Funding Network (WFN) saw a need for a publicly accessible tool to analyze funding patterns by nonprofit leadership, staff, and board demographics, it took a collaborative approach. Sara Keillholtz, WFN’s director of data and strategic insights, describes the process of designing the DataWoven dashboard, which “reflected feminist philanthropy’s values of power sharing, trust, transparency, reciprocity, and recognition.” And what patterns did the data reveal? Women of color lead fewer organizations than white women and are more often at the helm of newer, smaller ones that are disadvantaged by grantmaking policies favoring large legacy organizations.

Women are forging stronger partnerships, more equitable funding models

So, how are nonprofits led by women or focused on women and girls navigating ongoing and emerging challenges?

Building sustainable models to support maternal health. In the United States, over half of maternal health care providers report experiencing burnout, and more than two in five counties have no hospital, birth center, or obstetric provider. But some nonprofits are forming cross-sector collaborations to provide services—by combining philanthropic dollars and Medicaid reimbursements, entering into shared-cost agreements with hospitals, and tapping into corporate and private investments, according to GE Healthcare Foundation president Abigail Epane-Osuala.

Practicing solidarity: Lessons from a partnership between funders and social movements. Women are active across social movements in every subsector, including the environmental movement. And some are helping forge stronger partnerships between funders and nonprofits to amplify their collective impact. Jovanna Garcia Soto, a program officer at Grassroots International, describes how the organization is working in greater solidarity with World March of Women (WMW) and other partners—by prioritizing learning and trust, not only funding but walking alongside them, and providing financial autonomy.

What philanthropy can learn from Black women-led and community-centered funding. In a community-centered funding model, community members select grantees and define success metrics based on their lived expertise. And when organizations with Black women leaders receive flexible funding, they often innovate in unexpected ways, writes Kaci Patterson. Social Good Solutions, a Black woman-led and majority Black women-operated organization she founded, has developed funding models that offer a blueprint for shifting who makes decisions, how power is shared, and what counts as success.

Lessons for women leaders

Several women leaders who are stepping down shared lessons learned for the next generation.

How can funders build trust? Margaret Hempel, former executive director of the Collaborative for Gender + Reproductive Equity, emphasizes the importance of funding on-the-ground nonprofits early with general operating support and multiyear grants, trusting them to use the funds flexibly as opportunities and challenges arise.

Leadership is about creating space for others and for ourselves. The Ms. Foundation for Women’s Teresa C. Younger describes feminist leadership as leading by making space and listening deeply; holding power responsibly, intentionally, and unapologetically; and staying grounded. Her advice to new leaders includes: pace yourself, lead with abundance, and build community intentionally.

Building belonging in an age of disruption: Lessons in leadership. United Way Worldwide’s Angela F. Williams also focuses on listening—as a way to build belonging and trust, serve communities better, and learn from one another. Leadership “is about creating spaces where people feel safe enough to tell the truth and hopeful enough to imagine what comes next,” she writes.

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