Diving into the Data: Key Findings from the 2015 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report

In our continuing blog post series about the 2015 Grantmakers Salary and Benefits Report (GSB), this week we are tackling the key findings section of the report.

Get the Report

Members, remember you can download the GSB for free.

The report can also be purchased from our store at cof.org/2015salary.

Key Findings

The Council’s GSB always begins with a section on key findings. This chapter provides analyses of many of the major sections of the report and offers in one place the report’s most striking takeaways.

What You’ll Find

• Details about the participants in the survey, including the types of positions they held and the types of grantmaking organizations they worked at.
• Tables and analysis breaking down the demographics of foundation staff in 2015.
• Tables and summaries of data on the compensation of full-time staff in that year.
• Analyses of staff tenure and benefits data.
• Bolded and italicized key findings that pull out interesting data from the following chapters.

How to Use

The key findings section is a guide to help your exploration of the broader tables in later chapters. After reading it, you will know the sorts of data represented in those tables and the kinds of information available for you to benchmark your own organization’s compensation, benefits, or other practices against.

Data of Note

It’s easy to pull out some data of note within the key findings chapter. Many of the more interesting data points, pulled out by the Council’s research team in collaboration with our partners at the Foundation Center, are bolded and italicized at the start of each sub-section of the chapter. Some examples include:

• Only one quarter of CEOs were promoted from within their organizations.
• The median program officer position tenure was three years.
• Ninety-three percent of grantmakers offering voluntary benefits included a retirement or pension plan.
• About two fifths of respondents extended benefits to domestic partners.

Next Chapter

Come back and visit our blog in two weeks to dive into the data on staffing and salaries.