Where Most Needed

A significant new survey of charity leaders provides confirmation that the smallest charities are not very satisfying places to work.  The report by Compass Point and the Meyer Foundation, is a follow up to a 2001 executive survey we talked about a few weeks ago.

This time, the report presents quite a few survey results broken down by size of organization.  These fragments taken together paint a consistent—and troubling—picture about the smallest charities, which as we have seen are also the most numerous.   The smallest organizations: 

• have the smallest amount of staff support in finance, fund raising and HR,
• pay their leaders the least in absolute dollars, and
• are least likely to contribute to retirement plans, but
• pay their execs the most as a percentage of the total expenses
• their leaders show the least job satisfaction and
• they are most likely to have made a major financial sacrifice to serve
• they are the least likely to have a succession plan or credible candidates on staff
• their leaders make the least use of professional development

There are also pointers to suggest why some of these things are so.  Based on the survey results across the board, the typical nonprofit head has a list of likes and dislikes that goes like this:

TIE (between like & dislike): Advocacy

Unfortunately, the smaller the organization, the less likely it is to provide its leader with support in finance, fund raising, and human resources, so the person at the top spends lots of time on tasks they dislike.  On top of that, compensation tracks closely with staff size—so fewer staff also means execs receive less pay for doing more work they don't like.   

There are also some indicators of relative organizational efficiency.  The groups with 1-4 staff report average exec salaries of $52,000, those with over 100 on staff, $139,000.  In other words, the large org exec receive less than 3 times the salary of the small org exec (on average).  Yet the large organization employs 25 to 100 times as many people and their execs report higher job satisfaction. 

The report itself concludes that there is a need for more training, coaches and mentors, succession planning, and peer networking, and a need to reduce expectations of board support, especially in fund raising. 

However, WMN suggests an alternate conclusions: stop encouraging and romanticizing these small charity ventures—on the whole they are neither more effective nor more personally satisfying than larger organizations.  Encourage small organizations to merge into more efficient, larger units that will be more productive—and actually more satisfying for the people involved.