Non-Profit Executive Pay - Inputs and Outcomes

I’m sure you all are quite familiar with the debate over non-profit executive compensation and whether or not non-profit professionals should be paid salaries more similar to their for-profit counterparts. This post in the Do Good Well blog draws attention to what matters most when thinking about employee compensation in a non-profit. The blogger writes:

The mindset that a good nonprofit is any nonprofit that spend[s] less than 10% of their donations on overhead seems well intentioned but completely wrong-headed to me. The point is impact. The point is whether or not you achieve your mission. Dollars, as Jim Collins points out in his “Good to Great: Social Sector monograph” are inputs not outputs for most nonprofits, and therefore a dangerous way to rate the quality of an organization.

Indeed the most important thing to any social service agency is the output, the social value each organization provides per dollar. Social output should be at the core of any social enterprise, non-profit or otherwise. Here at Idealistics, we center our success around our outputs, which for our agency is the social impact of our services and technologies. With our core mission being to help resolve community crises, my focus as a manager is on assembling the best talent I can to produce the maximum amount of social good possible.