Salary Search Methodology

Salary Search uses public charities' IRS Form 990 and private foundations' Form 990-PF data as the basis for its analysis. (It does not include Form 990-EZ data.) With the exception of most faith-based organizations, all federally tax-exempt organizations with incomes of more than $25,000 must file a Form 990 or 990-EZ with the IRS every year. Private foundations of all income levels must file a 990-PF annually.

Salary Search includes compensation data for board members and officers as well as for top-compensated employees other than the officers whose total compensation exceeds $50,000 per year.

Salary Search allows users to compare compensation levels by selecting a benchmark job category or by defining his or her own job matches.

The benchmark job report relies on algorithms to organize the data into a consistent, structured format. Although job titles and compensation levels are good indicators of job responsibilities and functions, job titles are not standard, and organizations enter them on the Forms 990 and 990-PF in various ways. Thus, a similar job may carry many titles on different returns. For example, a vice president of operations may be entered as "Vice President of Operations," "COO," "VP, operations," "VP-operations," "VP/Operations," "Vice Pres Operations," "Operations VP," and in scores of other permutations. Similarly, the number of hours worked per week may be entered as "40," "40 hours," "40+," "100%," "Full Time," "Full-time," and so forth.

Salary Search uses algorithms to transform these disparate job titles into 14 benchmark jobs that are of the most interest to compensation consultants and senior managers. These algorithms were adapted from the process GuideStar has been using to produce its annual GuideStar Nonprofit Compensation Report.

The benchmark positions include CEO, CFO, and top managerial jobs in other key function areas such as operations, marketing, administration, and program development. Each position also is identified as either full- or part-time.

The current benchmarking process excludes such professional but non-managerial jobs as doctors, engineers, and professors, although some of these positions may have compensation levels higher than that of a CEO. Although the algorithms capture thousands of variations in job titles, some may escape the matching process. In a few cases an organization has not provided job titles at all.

The job matching report allows a subscriber to define his or her own job matches. The user enters one or more position titles to use as a benchmark for compensation data. If that job is already occupied by a known person in the user's organization (the "incumbent") and if the job holder is in earlier filings in the GuideStar database, the user may also want to set up the reports so that they include incumbent data as well as comparable jobs or matches. The job matching report draws from all of the information in the database, including data that is excluded from the benchmark job report.

Thus, Salary Search gives a user the freedom to select the best way to meet his or her nonprofit compensation research needs. The benchmark job reports do the work for the user, and do not require any compensation expertise. The job matching report allows a user who needs specialized information to create his or her job matches.

A simple mouse click analyzes and charts the data from either type of report or exports the results to an Excel file.

© 2003, 2005, GuideStar USA, Inc.