During the past 30 years, the nonprofit world has grown tremendously, and it is now also considered a much more “glamorous” career path than when I began in it. I, along with many others, just “fell” into it. Now, it is more of a chosen and planned career path, and the sector is attracting more people who have put thought and study into ideas, philosophies and missions through post-graduate programs in nonprofit and public sector studies.
But, I, and many hiring and recruiting professionals, feel the interest explosion and rapid onset of attraction to the sector has also given people an unrealistic expectation about the compensation to expect within it.
For the vast majority of the country’s more than 1.2 million registered 501(c)(3) organizations, the development function, and therefore development professionals, has always been of critical importance.
In part 1, I outlined a model of human resources maturity among nonprofit organizations based on the clear delineation of position, person and performance. I also examined the first two phases of this maturity including their implications for the design and the effectiveness of key human resources processes. These processes include recruitment and selection, compensation, performance management, professional development and career/succession planning.
During my years working as a consultant to nonprofits, I have observed three basic phases of organizations’ human resources maturity. This maturity can be defined in terms of how much delineation exists between position, person and performance. Each phase has implications for the design and effectiveness of key human resources processes including recruitment and selection, [...]
In my previous post, I made a case for the use of salary ranges as the foundation of a formal compensation program for nonprofit organizations. Particularly for organizations experiencing or have experienced significant growth, the use of salary ranges can go a long way toward ensuring salaries are equitable and competitive while, at the same [...]
In a recent post, compensation consultant Ann Bares questions whether salary ranges, long a staple of compensation programs among America’s companies and organizations, are still a useful tool given the relatively slow pace of salary annual growth during the past two decades. There is no question that administering salaries — and, in particular, differentiating rewards according [...]
Managers are commonly ill-equipped to understand the dynamics of their compensation costs, never mind monitor and control them.” I was struck by this statement by Chuck Csizmar in a recent post on the Compensation Cafe blog. Chuck was making a case for companies to focus on the return on investment (ROI) for employee compensation, and he went on to discuss the reasons for and consequences of managers making poor compensation decisions.
I have to agree with Chuck about managers’ abilities in this area as this phenomenon is at the heart of a challenge I have repeatedly faced when working with nonprofit organizations to overhaul and improve their compensation practices. But, rather than ruing the fact that managers lack these skills and looking for ways improve them, I suggest that there is no real need for the vast majority of managers to develop them in the first place.
A recent survey found that 73% of nonprofit organizations have a formal policy to review executive compensation. As a human resources and management consultant to nonprofits, what I found striking about this statistic is that it means 27% of organizations do not have a formal policy.
Question: How do you ask for a raise? Answer: From what I am seeing and hearing, the practical answer is that you don’t. Many employers are not even hiring on a full-time basis let alone giving raises. Many have cut bonuses or have made them entirely discretionary. If, despite the uncertain times and these hesitant [...]
