As nonprofit leaders, it’s essential that we have tools to make informed decisions. One of those tools is our Salary and Benefits Report – which gives us context and a comparative benchmark for compensation in Alaska’s nonprofit sector. What’s in the report? The 2026 Salary and Benefits Report & Dashboard features: Salary data for 54 positions, including Executive Director/CEO, Finance Director/CFO, Development/Fundraising Director, administrative support, accountants, clinical support, and program staff Data from over 1,500 nonprofits in Alaska, Idaho, Oregon, Montana, Washington, Utah, and Hawaii Regional breakdown of Alaska data from Southcentral, Interior, Southeast, and the Southwest Data from organizations with budgets ranging from less than $100,000 to over $20 million Data from 15 types of nonprofits, including education, human services, health care, environmental, recreation/sports, and arts, culture, and humanities groups Benefit data on medical, dental,… Read more »

Help us create a tool for Alaska nonprofits to make critical personnel decisions. By taking part in our Salary and Benefits Survey, you’ll help us create a report that will: Guide salary decisions for new and existing roles Show how your organization’s compensation compares to others in the sector Assess how your benefits stack up against sector standards Why should I participate? The report is only as good as the level of participation—the more participation, the more reliable the data will be to help guide compensation practices. And, if your organization participates, you’ll receive $150 off the price of the full report (The regular price for organizations that do not participate in the survey is $325 or $275 for Foraker Partners). The survey is open for participation through November 14, 2025. What do I need to complete… Read more »

On July 1, 2025,  the minimum wage increased to $13 per hour, following the approval of Ballot Measure 1. Under this same measure, the minimum wage will continue to rise, reaching $14 per hour in 2026 and $15 per hour in 2027. Additionally, beginning July 1, 2025, employers who do not already have a paid time off policy that meets the elements of the ballot measure are required to provide paid sick leave. If an employer has 15 or more employees, each employee can accrue up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year. If the employer has fewer than 15 employees, each employee can accrue up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year. Ballot Measure 1 Regulations have been published along with an updated FAQ from the Department of Labor and Workforce Development. Do you… Read more »

On July 1, 2025,  the minimum wage will increase to $13 per hour, following the approval of Ballot Measure 1 in 2024. Under this same measure, the minimum wage will continue to rise, reaching $14 per hour in 2026 and $15 per hour in 2027. Additionally, beginning July 1, 2025, employers who do not already have a paid time off policy that meets the elements of the ballot measure will be required to provide paid sick leave. If an employer has 15 or more employees, each employee can accrue up to 56 hours of paid sick leave per year. If the employer has fewer than 15 employees, each employee can accrue up to 40 hours of paid sick leave per year. In February, we offered a webinar sharing what we… Read more »

Over the last few months, we’ve shared information about the new Federal Minimum Salary Changes for Alaska Employers that was set to take effect on January 1, 2025. However, on November 15, 2024, a federal judge in Texas struck down the U.S. Labor Department’s overtime rule. The decision applies to the higher salary level test that went into effect on July 1 and also blocks the next change set for January 1, 2025. The district judge also invalidated the automatic increases scheduled for every three years. Based on this decision, the Alaska salary threshold for exempt-level positions remains at $48,796.80 per year, or $938.40 per week. We will keep you updated and share additional information as it becomes available…. Read more »

This month we released our Salary and Benefits Report & Dashboard. While we have been producing these reports for nonprofit decision-making since 2003, this year our report is bigger and better than ever thanks to a partnership with the state nonprofit associations in Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon. Certainly, this type of data has been useful in the past but right now the nonprofit workforce is at the nexus of events that likely will result in a lasting shift for current and future employees. We have reported over the years on the challenges nonprofit employees and employers face, which sadly have not changed much because few organizations ever feel like they are fully staffed or financially flexible enough to deploy the team they have in all the ways they think… Read more »

Our collective workforce woes are real, and we are all searching for what we can do to attract and retain a great workforce. Some of the obvious tools for compensation are outside our reach at the moment, but we do have tools in house right now that we can use to engage and understand our workforce more fully. One of those is meaningful evaluation. There is an art and a science to getting helpful feedback, and if you are the executive director or CEO, you likely know better than most how difficult evaluations are to come by, and meaningful ones are a bit like unicorns. That said, it is not just appropriate to expect some form of helpful feedback, but if you are the executive, it is part of the… Read more »

Seventeen-percent – that number represents the average of Alaska’s workforce that works for nonprofits. In rural and remote rural Alaska, it can be as high as 40%. Rarely is the sector talked about as an industry, but if we were, we would be the second largest Alaska industry based on employment – right behind oil and gas. The data is compelling for many reasons. One is the opportunity to look closely at what we are doing in the sector to both attract and retain this workforce. In 2006, Tom Tierney published an article in the Stanford Social Innovation Review called The Leadership Deficit in which he articulated his view of our future as a sector. A key element of that future was a high turnover of Baby Boomers and a… Read more »