I’m mostly aligned with the Seema’s view, though I think it’s systematic of a wider problem in which funders pay more than their grantees almost universally. I’ve experienced at both IDinsight (where I was Chief Economist) and Rethink Priorities (where I’m on the board) a steady drumbeat of top talent going to funders, including GiveWell and Coefficient. I don’t believe this happens because of any careful thinking on where talent is best allocated in the sector, but instead because (a) foundations just can pay more because they don’t have a binding budget constraint and (b) even if they do have enough money (which they typically don’t) nonprofits need to be careful about salaries because top salaries are public on 990 forms and donors will be scared away by large salaries.
When I’ve spoken with friends at funding orgs and brought up the issue of salary disparity, I’ve usually heard some version of attempting to align salaries with other foundations or the private sector. But that doesn’t address this imbalance between foundations and NGOs/grantees in their space.
After spending some side on both the donee side as well as the donor side (with Giving Green), my opinion is that giving away money is easier and more fun day-to-day than working for an org where you have to fundraise and/or serve demanding clients. Therefore I don’t fundamentally think that donor orgs need to pay more to attract similar level of talent as NGOs. But trying to fix the coordination problem required to shift norms in the sector is likely impossible.
Therefore I don’t fundamentally think that donor orgs need to pay more to attract similar level of talent as NGOs.
Additional reasons this might be true, at least in the EA space:
GiveWell, CG, etc. may be (or may be perceived as) more stable employers than many potential grantees. I’m pretty confident that they will be around in ten years, that the risk of budget-motivated layoffs is modest, and so on. This may be a particular advantage for mid-career folks with kids and mortgages who are less risk tolerant than their younger peers.
It may be easier—or at least perceived as easier—to jump from a more prestigious role at a funder to another job in the social sector than it would be from a non-funder role. So someone in the private sector could think it less risky to leave a high-paying private sector job to work at GiveWell than to work at one of its grantees, even if the salaries were the same.
Very useful observation that a lot of the high payers are funders and why they’re able to do that in a way grantees can’t.
My most actionable suggestion is for GW and CG (and others, but again, I’m singling them out as a compliment) to gather and report descriptive statistics on past and future jobs and salaries of employees, plus maybe some employee surveys, to understand if the counterfactual job was a higher-paying job in the private sector or a lower-paying job in the social sector. [I realize there are permutations besides my either-or.]
I once saw on the Forum that someone had scraped the 990s from a bunch of EA and AI safety* orgs and put all the salaries in a spreadsheet, with names—it wouldn’t be that hard to go from that to at least an estimate of what you’re looking for, for the highest-paid employees. I can’t find a link to the post anymore, and want to respect that they might have taken it down with good reason, but given it’s public information, if some enterprising data-wrangling Forum-poster wants to dm me for it I’m not opposed to sharing the link...
*I do have a loose intuition that besides the grantmaker/grantee divide, the AI/not-AI divide within EA is driving some of the bizarre funding and salary dynamics
Per your foundations vs grantees point, I just saw that the Bezos Family Foundation is looking for a new president, with a salary of $500K to $700K. BFF’s work seems pretty straightforward—giving away $150 million a year (wealth Jeff’s parents got from Amazon). That salary is higher than that of the typical president of a $150 million a year nonprofit with actual operations.
I’m mostly aligned with the Seema’s view, though I think it’s systematic of a wider problem in which funders pay more than their grantees almost universally. I’ve experienced at both IDinsight (where I was Chief Economist) and Rethink Priorities (where I’m on the board) a steady drumbeat of top talent going to funders, including GiveWell and Coefficient. I don’t believe this happens because of any careful thinking on where talent is best allocated in the sector, but instead because (a) foundations just can pay more because they don’t have a binding budget constraint and (b) even if they do have enough money (which they typically don’t) nonprofits need to be careful about salaries because top salaries are public on 990 forms and donors will be scared away by large salaries.
When I’ve spoken with friends at funding orgs and brought up the issue of salary disparity, I’ve usually heard some version of attempting to align salaries with other foundations or the private sector. But that doesn’t address this imbalance between foundations and NGOs/grantees in their space.
After spending some side on both the donee side as well as the donor side (with Giving Green), my opinion is that giving away money is easier and more fun day-to-day than working for an org where you have to fundraise and/or serve demanding clients. Therefore I don’t fundamentally think that donor orgs need to pay more to attract similar level of talent as NGOs. But trying to fix the coordination problem required to shift norms in the sector is likely impossible.
Additional reasons this might be true, at least in the EA space:
GiveWell, CG, etc. may be (or may be perceived as) more stable employers than many potential grantees. I’m pretty confident that they will be around in ten years, that the risk of budget-motivated layoffs is modest, and so on. This may be a particular advantage for mid-career folks with kids and mortgages who are less risk tolerant than their younger peers.
It may be easier—or at least perceived as easier—to jump from a more prestigious role at a funder to another job in the social sector than it would be from a non-funder role. So someone in the private sector could think it less risky to leave a high-paying private sector job to work at GiveWell than to work at one of its grantees, even if the salaries were the same.
Very useful observation that a lot of the high payers are funders and why they’re able to do that in a way grantees can’t.
My most actionable suggestion is for GW and CG (and others, but again, I’m singling them out as a compliment) to gather and report descriptive statistics on past and future jobs and salaries of employees, plus maybe some employee surveys, to understand if the counterfactual job was a higher-paying job in the private sector or a lower-paying job in the social sector. [I realize there are permutations besides my either-or.]
I once saw on the Forum that someone had scraped the 990s from a bunch of EA and AI safety* orgs and put all the salaries in a spreadsheet, with names—it wouldn’t be that hard to go from that to at least an estimate of what you’re looking for, for the highest-paid employees. I can’t find a link to the post anymore, and want to respect that they might have taken it down with good reason, but given it’s public information, if some enterprising data-wrangling Forum-poster wants to dm me for it I’m not opposed to sharing the link...
*I do have a loose intuition that besides the grantmaker/grantee divide, the AI/not-AI divide within EA is driving some of the bizarre funding and salary dynamics
Per your foundations vs grantees point, I just saw that the Bezos Family Foundation is looking for a new president, with a salary of $500K to $700K. BFF’s work seems pretty straightforward—giving away $150 million a year (wealth Jeff’s parents got from Amazon). That salary is higher than that of the typical president of a $150 million a year nonprofit with actual operations.
https://assets-prod.russellreynolds.com/api/public/content/rra-spec-bezos-family-foundation-president.pdf