It's all too common in the nonprofit sector for our passion and ingenuity to exceed our financial resources. And our State of the Movement report revealed that, indeed, many bike/walk advocacy organizations struggle with capacity — finding the dollars to not only do the work but to fairly compensate their employees. Still, over the past 20 years we've seen an exponential jump in budgets of Alliance member organizations.
Like many social change movements, there’s a broad range in the size and financial capacity of Alliance member organizations. Overall, Alliance member organizations reported a collective $88 million in budgets in 2014 — a remarkable leap from the $10,000 total budget reported by Alliance members in 1996.
Individual organization budgets ranged from $300 to almost $8 million. Of organizations with paid staff, the median budget was $125,000 and the mode was $10,000. For all-volunteer organizations, budgets ranged from $0 to $80,000. The median budget was just under $20,000 with expenses averaging $11,000.
Executive compensation
Among Alliance member organizations, executive director compensation ranged from stipends of $7,000 to annual salaries of $175,000. Looking exclusively at member organizations with a paid executive director, the average and median salary was $61,500. The most common salary was $45,000.
Because of the still modest size of most Alliance member organizations, it was difficult to find comparable metrics from across the nonprofit sector. A 2014 report from Charity Navigator found that, for “small organizations” (budgets of $1 to $3.5 million), the median executive income was $97,158.
