Many of you know about the long-standing nonprofit learning and convening sessions NAO produces or partners with statewide and virtually. Almost 200 fundraising leaders from across the state joined us at the very end of February for the Nonprofit Fundraising Summit in Corvallis, and I know many of you are getting ready to attend the Oregon Nonprofit Leaders Conference coming up in Ashland in early April. You likely are also aware of our important work in the public policy realm by advocating for better systems and the flow of resources between the public and nonprofit sectors. One important part of our programming that many nonprofits are unaware of is our work in research and identification of trends in our sector. At NAO, we call that program our “Thought Leadership” work, and we have several significant Thought Leadership initiatives underway in 2024 that I wanted to be sure you are aware of.

As part of the work that we are doing to make systemic change in how the government works with nonprofits, we are engaging in a series of studies to understand the disparities we keep seeing in nonprofit wages compared to other sectors and even within our sector. It is no secret in our communities that nonprofit jobs are often the lowest paying yet have some of the highest expectations attached to them to make the world a better place. Driven by decades of a philosophical approach that: nonprofit staff are “dedicated to their missions” (we are!) and therefore “aren’t in it for the money,” (we’re not, but we need to live!) gave rise to unacceptable low pay scales in our sector. Recognizing this issue as an existential threat to how social, human, and cultural work is made available in our communities, NAO has stepped up to act. We have engaged ECONorthwest, our region’s premier economic research firm to conduct a wage analysis for us that will use an interdisciplinary approach grounded in applied econometrics. This research will give us an independent view of the forces driving low wages in our sector and begin to point out key factors that (may/likely) need to change. Our preliminary research across the U.S. has indicated that this approach – using economics as a grounding discipline – may be the first of its kind to study the nonprofit sector compared to the private and public sectors.

Along with that wage analysis work, we will conduct a more traditional but essential nonprofit compensation and benefits study. The study asks participating nonprofits to indicate the pay and benefits of specific classes of nonprofit workers to get an apples-to-apples comparison across sub-sectors, regions, and sizes of nonprofits in Oregon. In fact, we are launching that work today with the release of our Nonprofit Compensation and Benefits Survey. For the first time, this survey is simultaneously being implemented across the Northwest through our partner State Associations in Alaska, Idaho, Montana, and Washington. This will yield especially useful data that we can report back on areas where nonprofit competition for human resources straddles borders or workers live in neighboring states.

Finally, NAO deeply believes in partnerships. As these studies continue through the Spring, we will be engaging with other coalitions and groups that have unique capacities to help make sense of the collated data from these studies and co-author “policy papers” that will point to solutions on how nonprofits, together with the public and private sector, can come together to support a systemic change in the wage suppression that has taken place in nonprofits. That work will take time, but it is critical to building a more sustainable infrastructure, and we will be unwavering in pushing for change.

I want to thank everyone in advance that fills out the surveys we will be sending you through the Spring. I know that these take your time, and I am grateful for your participation. This Thought Leadership research is essential to drive the change we need in our sector. We are excited to report back what we find and, together with you, identify the solutions we all need to push forward.