Methodology

Data source

• Lucido uses Form 990 returns that the IRS publishes as e-file data.
• The IRS publishes this data in monthly releases.
• Lucido loads IRS releases published from January 2024 onward.
• Lucido loads Form 990, Form 990-EZ, and Form 990-PF returns.
• Returns filed on paper are not included, because the IRS does not publish them as e-file data.
• Organizations that file Form 990-N do not report compensation, so they are not included in compensation figures.
• Returns without an organization name, EIN, tax year, or address are not loaded.
• Organization names are shown in readable case, and the name as filed with the IRS is unchanged in the data.

Years covered

• Each return is recorded under its tax year, as stated on the return.
• Lucido covers tax years 2019 through 2024.
• Individual compensation records from every year are visible without an account.
• Nonprofits file returns months after their tax year ends, so recent tax years contain fewer returns than earlier ones.
• Returns for tax years before 2023 are included only when they appear in the releases Lucido loads.

How compensation is defined

• On Form 990, compensation is reportable compensation from the organization plus other compensation from the organization, from Part VII, Section A.
• Compensation from related organizations is not included in the total.
• On Form 990-EZ, compensation is the amount in the compensation column of the officer list.
• On Form 990-PF, compensation is compensation plus contributions to employee benefit plans plus expense account and other allowances, from the officer list.
• Schedule J, when filed, provides the split into base, bonus, other, deferred, and nontaxable benefits.
• Schedule J does not change the total.
• Blank amounts are counted as zero.
• Amounts are shown as filed.

Titles and roles

• Lucido keeps each title as filed.
• Lucido also assigns each title to a standard role by matching the words in the title.
• Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer are the same role.
• When a title is ambiguous, Lucido uses the officer and trustee boxes checked on the return.

Who is excluded

• Records with compensation of $100 or less are excluded from search results and benchmarks.
• Organizations with revenue of $100 or less are excluded from search results and benchmarks.
• Institutional trustees, such as banks and trust companies, are excluded from search results and benchmarks.
• Records without a person's name are not loaded.

Duplicate and amended returns

• Lucido keeps one return per organization per tax year.
• When a later IRS release contains another return for the same organization and tax year, the later return replaces the earlier one.
• An amended return replaces the original only when it appears in a later release.

How benchmarks are computed

• Each benchmark counts each organization once.
• For each organization, Lucido uses its most recent tax year in the group and its highest-paid person in the role.
• Percentiles are computed by linear interpolation between the nearest values and rounded to whole dollars.
• The median is the 50th percentile.
• Sample size is the number of organizations.
• The compensation report shows a row only when it has at least 50 organizations.
• Organization size is total annual revenue from the most recent Form 990 filing, grouped into nine bands: under $100K, $100K to $250K, $250K to $500K, $500K to $1M, $1M to $3M, $3M to $10M, $10M to $30M, $30M to $100M, over $100M. Private foundations (Form 990-PF) are sized by total assets instead, in eight bands: no reported assets, under $1M, $1M to $10M, $10M to $25M, $25M to $50M, $50M to $150M, $150M to $1B, over $1B. Organizations that report zero or negative revenue are placed in the smallest band; organizations with no revenue figure are left out of size cuts.
• State is the state in the organization's address on its return.
• Benchmarks are recomputed after each monthly data load.

Sector classification

• Sectors come from NTEE codes in the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File.
• A sector is the major group, the first letter of the NTEE code.
• Lucido refreshes NTEE codes every quarter.
• Private foundations without an NTEE code are classified as Philanthropy, Voluntarism and Grantmaking (T).
• Organizations without an NTEE code are not included in sector benchmarks.

Surveyed pay ranges

• The pay ranges for bookkeeper, office manager and program coordinator come from the Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics survey of the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, May 2025 release.
• The survey asks employers what they pay people in each occupation. It measures wages: gross pay for regular hours, not including overtime and other premium pay or the cost of benefits. It does not measure total pay.
• Each role is matched to one survey occupation, shown in the first table. Where the O*NET database lists the role's exact title under an occupation, that occupation is used. Otherwise the occupation is chosen by what the job does.
• The range is the survey's national estimate for the occupation in NAICS 813000, Religious, Grantmaking, Civic, Professional, and Similar Organizations: the industry made up of nonprofits such as churches, foundations, advocacy groups, civic clubs and professional associations. The survey has no category for nonprofits as a whole, so this is the closest nonprofit figure it publishes. The range is the 25th percentile, the median and the 75th percentile of annual wages.
• Narrowing by sector uses the survey's national estimate for the industry matched to that sector, shown in the second table. A sector is the NTEE major group of the organization. Industry estimates cover private employers, which for some industries, such as health care, include for-profit employers.
• Narrowing by state scales each percentile by the occupation's state-to-national ratio for that same percentile, using the occupation's figures across all employers. The survey does not publish estimates by state and industry together, so a state and a sector together apply the state ratio to the industry estimate.
• There is no size filter for these roles. The survey does not report wages by employer size, so a requested size is reported as not applied and the range stays for every size.
• A figure the survey withholds or does not publish is never filled in from somewhere else. The filter is dropped and the page says so.

Surveyed pay ranges: sources

• Wage data: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics, May 2025 (https://www.bls.gov/oes/).
• Occupation matches were made against the O*NET database, version 31.0 (https://www.onetcenter.org/database.html).

This page includes information from the O*NET 31.0 Database by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA). Used under the CC BY 4.0 license. O*NET® is a trademark of USDOL/ETA.

Today's estimate

• Reported pay is a year or more old by the time it is public. The estimate ages the reported pay forward using the Bureau of Labor Statistics Employment Cost Index for private industry wages and salaries.
• The low end of the estimate assumes no raise since the pay was reported. The high end assumes the typical raises seen in the Employment Cost Index.
• The estimate is typically off by about 6% after one year, 11% after two years, and 15% after three years.
• About 12% of the time a new person is in the job, and no estimate can predict that.
• Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employment Cost Index.

Update schedule

• Lucido loads each new IRS release after it is published.
• The "Last updated" date on this page is the date the latest release finished loading.
• The compensation report refreshes daily.