This resource comprises existing, available data about compensation for community organizers in New York City. There are two data sources: a compensation study conducted by Nonprofit NY in 2024 and individual job announcements posted since the start of 2024 (“new jobs data”). With survey data from 381 different organizations, the Nonprofit NY study provides a bird’s eye view of who works at nonprofits in New York City. It speaks to the breakdown of subsectors within the nonprofit universe (as defined by the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities used by the IRS), organizations’ budget size,  employee demographics, and compensation and benefits. 

The vast majority of positions considered as organizers are listed in “Human Services” and at organizations with a budget between $1,000,000 and $4,999,999. In general, the number of respondents in other subsectors who employ organizers is too small to glean comparative data across different types of employers. 

New jobs data was pulled through postings on Google, idealist.org, and LinkedIn. The data includes 33 open positions, with nearly all containing the word “organizer” in the title or mirroring the jobs included in the Nonprofit NY data. The data excludes positions that were part-time or did not require one to live in the New York metro area, as well as electoral campaign or union organizer jobs. There was a wide range of employers, including housing organizations, local government, and base-building groups working at both the citywide and neighborhood levels.

In the data available across both sources, the most meaningful comparative relationships fall between two categories: a lower tier of community, senior, or digital organizers, and an upper tier consisting of managers and directors. Thus, this report uses a two-tiered system for job level, the lower being non-managerial and upper being managerial. The lower tier jobs are presumed to be classified as non-exempt and eligible for collective bargaining.

Overall, the two data sources yield very similar estimates for average compensation. In section IV, final estimates (established in section III) are then set against the cost of living calculations by Economic Policy Institute for three different family structures (one adult with no children, two adults with no children, and one adult with one child) living in eight counties in the New York metropolitan area: the five boroughs of New York City, Westchester County, Nassau County, and Hudson County, NJ.

While the cost of living in New York City is notoriously expensive, this data shows how difficult it can be for residents to make ends meet even without any dependents, and how truly impossible it is for those who have them.