Compensation benchmarks — Sunny, Angie, Roxy

TL;DR (the bumper-sticker version)

1. The "$50K surplus" is a mirage. It exists because Sunny is donating roughly $80–110K/yr of executive labor at market value. Booking a notional ED salary turns the surplus into a structural deficit. This is the most important number in this memo.
2. Angie is the only role that is materially under market right now in cash terms (likely paid $0–$30K for what the comp data calls a $55–70K job at this org size). She is also the highest retention risk per board notes. She gets the first real cash raise.
3. Roxy is fine where she is for what she does. The question "should we pay for what we wish she did" is the wrong question — long-form content writers and expansionary growth marketers are different professions. Don't retrain; augment with a fractional growth contractor (or formalize Rachel) and let Roxy own her lane.
4. Sunny is irreplaceable at any nonprofit-comparable salary. Treat her as a venture-style founder being compensated below market in exchange for mission ownership, and adopt a shadow ED salary (board-approved, contemporaneously documented) starting now so the comp curve can be flattened later instead of cliff-jumped.
5. The biggest hidden governance issue this memo surfaces: Rachel (content strategist) is currently paid by Sunny personally. This is an undisclosed related-party subsidy. Move her to org payroll in the next 90 days. It is more urgent than any of the comp adjustments below.

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SourcesMethodology and sources

What I benchmarked against

The single most important benchmark in this memo

SheJumps's 11-year revenue and ED-comp trajectory (Claire Smallwood, ED throughout):

Read the table. SheJumps's ED held herself at $23–25K cash for the first four years while scaling from $148K → $360K. She only crossed $50K when revenue passed $400K, and only crossed $80K when revenue passed $650K. Total payroll absorbed 28–45% of revenue throughout — a useful guardrail for GEA's hiring envelope.

This trajectory is GEA's most defensible comparability benchmark for IRS purposes and it is the spine of the per-role analysis and the 24-month roadmap below.

Methodology limits to flag

• The Cairn Project's pre-merger 990s and Summit Scholarship Foundation's 990s are not publicly indexed in ProPublica/Nonprofit Explorer (likely 990-N filers given small revenue, which means no compensation disclosure). I could not directly establish historical comp baselines for GEA's predecessor entities; ranges in this memo come from peer organizations.
• Candid's 2025 report aggregates "Education / Scholarships / Awards" as a mission category that lumps test prep and tutoring orgs in with outdoor/adventure orgs. I weighted SheJumps heavier than Candid medians because the mission match is closer.
• All ranges in this memo are annualized full-time-equivalent. Where someone is part-time, convert proportionally before comparing.

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§2Per-role analysis

2A. Sunny — Founder, Executive Director, and several other things she isn't being paid for

What Sunny actually does (synthesized from retreat notes and observable revenue):

Sum-of-parts market: $200–350K cash + gear. This is the comp you would need to hire someone else to do all the things Sunny is currently doing. No one person can; you would need three to four people.

At-the-org-size benchmark (the conservative number):

• SheJumps at GEA's current $170K revenue paid the ED $24K (FY2018 datapoint). At $350K they paid $50K. At $650K they paid $80K. At $1M they paid $100K.
• Candid 2025 median ED comp for $250K–$1M orgs in education/scholarship mission area: ~$55–75K.
• Outdoor Alliance at $1.5M paid $209K, but that's a policy org with a DC premium and a different ED profile.

Per the comp tables, today, at this org size, the "right" cash ED salary is $55–75K. Adjusted upward for the European brand-access skill cluster, multi-language fluency, and revenue-attribution (LOA's $55K total package and the European pipeline behind it would not exist without Sunny), call it $80–95K — a 75th-percentile-and-up number that the IRS rebuttable-presumption framework explicitly allows for high-caliber executives backed by comparability data.

Recommendation for Sunny — today:

1. Adopt a "shadow ED salary" of $85K as a board-approved figure even if cash comp paid is lower. This protects future board decisions to true up comp without an awkward 3× jump, and it makes the donated-labor subsidy visible in the budget.
2. Realize $30–40K of that in cash this fiscal year if surplus allows after the Rachel-on-org-payroll fix (see §5). This is well within the surplus.
3. Document in board minutes the comparability data (SheJumps trajectory, Candid medians) used to set both the shadow salary and the cash realization. This is the IRS-required step.
4. Treat the difference ($45–55K) as contributed services — it is not a tax deduction for Sunny under IRS rules, but it should appear in board financials as an in-kind line so the org's true cost structure is honest.

Why this matters more than it looks: Every grant, every sponsor proposal, every estate gift, and every potential successor will eventually look at the org's 990 and ask "what does the ED make?" A $0 or $20K ED salary in year one tells donors "this is a volunteer side project." An $85K shadow with deferred realization tells them "this is a real organization on a glidepath." That framing is worth real fundraising dollars.

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2B. Angie — Program lead and the highest retention risk on the org chart

What Angie actually does:

• First 50K Sisterhood — built from scratch in ~2 weeks; 15 selected from 50–100 applicants; participants raised $21K+; the program the retreat explicitly classified as "Grow."
• See Her Outside podcast — produces and hosts; 6+ month backlog; ~200 listeners/episode; conversion estimated 0.5–2% per episode into ecosystem.
• Trailblazers — owns the program; needs the org to define what success looks like before she can be measured against it.
• Brand relationships — Title IX in particular — actively cultivating; the retreat flagged a "parallel conversations" tension to resolve.
• Rim to Rim group fundraisers — at least co-owner of operations.
• Outdoor Retailer (Aug 19–21) — attending; booth being planned.

Role mapping:

• Primary: Program Manager II (multi-program portfolio), nonprofit
• Secondary: Brand Partnerships Manager (Title IX, future Deuter)
• Tertiary: Podcast producer/host (technically a discrete profession, but commonly rolled into program-lead roles at small nonprofits)

Market range (annualized FTE):

Adjustments specific to Angie:

• +10% for retention risk explicitly flagged by the board.
• +5% for the founder-of-program effort on First 50K — she stood up a "Grow" program with two weeks of headstart and no marketing budget. That's worth a premium most program managers can't claim.
• +5–10% Pacific Northwest cost of living vs. national median.
• −5–10% if the role is genuinely part-time (likely true today). Pro-rate down accordingly.

Recommended Angie compensation, FTE-equivalent: $62–72K. Today (assuming part-time): pro-rate honestly and pay at top of that band on a per-hour basis.

If Angie's effective FTE today is 0.5, target $31–36K cash now. If she's full-time, target $62–72K and find the cash in the FY27 budget (LOWA TransAlpine program admin fee should at least partially cover this). If she's at $25–35K today on a full-time basis, she is under market by $30–40K and that is the single most legitimate cash-raise case in this memo.

Signal: under market. If Angie leaves, First 50K's growth trajectory loses its operator, the Title IX relationship resets to zero, and the podcast goes on hiatus. The cost of that loss is well over $30K in foregone revenue.

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2C. Roxy — and the question Sunny actually asked

The brief frames Roxy honestly: "mostly manages blog / website / newsletter long-form writing and a LITTLE bit of grit lit with just logistics vs expansionary strategy and marketing." Sunny wants to know: should we be paying for what she does, or paying for what we wish she did?

What Roxy actually does (today):

• Long-form content: blog, website, newsletter — the steady editorial drumbeat.
• Grit Lit (Gridlit) logistics: ~60 subscribers, ~$8K/year revenue, 20–30% margin, ~$1.6–2.4K profit. She manages logistics; Sunny sources content; Alison packs and ships.

Role mapping for what she does:

• Primary: Content Writer / Editor, small nonprofit
• Secondary: Coordinator / Operations (the Gridlit logistics piece)

Market range:

At FTE-equivalent: $40–55K. As an hourly contract or part-time arrangement: $25–40/hr.

Now the question Sunny actually asked: should we be paying for the gap?

Sunny's instinct is correct that there is a gap. The gap is between "we have long-form editorial production capacity" (what Roxy delivers) and "we have a growth-marketing engine that turns that content into reach, conversion, and revenue" (what the org needs). These are different professions:

Retraining a long-form writer into a growth marketer rarely works. The skill sets, the personality types, and the daily rituals are different. The bigger risk of trying is that you ruin a capable writer by misassigning her and still don't get growth.

The honest move is to keep Roxy in her lane and fill the strategy gap separately. Concretely:

1. Confirm Roxy at her current scope at a contract or part-time rate appropriate to her hours. If she is FTE, target $42–50K. If she is contract, target $30–40/hr depending on output volume.
2. Stop treating Gridlit as a profit center. Its $1.6–2.4K profit per year does not justify Roxy's logistics time at her hourly rate. Either (a) double down on growth (the retreat said "Keep" — so price the growth path), (b) flip it to a sponsor-funded marketing channel rather than a P&L line, or (c) honestly de-scope to a single annual or biannual edition. Letting it limp at 60 subscribers indefinitely costs more than it makes.
3. Fill the expansionary content/growth gap with Rachel. Rachel is already producing content for the org — and Sunny is currently paying her personally. Formalize Rachel as a fractional content strategist at $1.5–2.5K/month or $50–75/hr contract for 8–12 hrs/week. This is the single most important hire-equivalent decision on this comp list, and it is functionally free because the money is already being spent. (See §5.)

Signal: at market for the role she actually does. Don't move her cash comp. Move the org's expectations of her instead.

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§3Twenty-four-month compensation roadmap, tied to revenue milestones

Anchored to SheJumps's revenue → comp ratios, adjusted for GEA's surplus position, the LOA pipeline, and the explicit "comp follows revenue" principle from the retreat.

Stage 0 — Today ($170K cash this year, $50K surplus)

Stage 1 — Cross $250K (likely FY27 with LOWA TransAlpine fee + film festival lift)

Stage 2 — Cross $400K (Cactus to Clouds + First 50K expansion + sponsor renewals)

Stage 3 — Cross $600K (added events + scaled calendar + new sponsor verticals)

Stage 4 — Year-4 target ($900K, ~5.3× growth)

Revenue triggers, written down so the board can hold itself to them

This converts "comp follows revenue" from a slogan into actual board-enforceable triggers. Without triggers, comp ends up either frozen or arbitrary — both are bad.

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§4Non-cash compensation — the highest-leverage levers given the cash constraint

Below-market cash gets a lot more tolerable when the non-cash package is uncommonly good. The outdoor industry has some unusual levers here that most nonprofit comp benchmarking misses.

Tier 1 — adopt now (low cost, high retention impact)

Total cash cost of Tier 1: $15–21K/yr. Within the existing surplus. The retention math on this alone probably justifies it before any of the comp adjustments above.

Tier 2 — adopt when crossing $400K

• Health insurance stipend ($300–500/mo per FTE) — defining moment for the org's transition from "side project that pays a little" to "real employer."
• Retirement match (SIMPLE IRA 3% match is the standard small-nonprofit choice). Negligible administrative cost.
• Professional dues paid (Outdoor Industry Association, podcast guilds, etc.).

Tier 3 — equity-in-mission instruments (founder/Sunny-specific)

• Named program / fund with founder credit visible in perpetuity (already implicit but should be formalized in bylaws).
• First right of refusal on advisory / board roles post-ED tenure (succession planning, but also a real comp item).
• Documented "shadow comp" track record (see §5) that supports future deferred-comp realization if the org's finances ever permit.
• D&O insurance now (the retreat flagged this gap). It is both a governance requirement and a compensation item — without it, Sunny is personally exposed for board-led decisions she did not solely make. Estimate $1.5–3K/yr at this org size.

What to specifically not do

• Don't offer equity (you can't, it's a 501(c)(3)).
• Don't offer profit-sharing (same).
• Don't offer signing bonuses to anyone except a competitive future hire — they signal scarcity, not abundance, at small nonprofits.
• Don't offer student loan repayment unless you can sustain it — it becomes an expectation overnight.

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§5The founder-ED comp problem — the uncomfortable part of this memo

Sunny did not ask me to address her own comp directly. The brief says I should anyway: "Most founder-EDs underpay themselves to a fault and it backfires at the 3-year mark." This section is that conversation.

The pattern, with citations

1. Founder-EDs systematically underpay themselves, often by 30–50% relative to comparable hires, and the gap compounds over time. After 5–7 years, the gap is structurally locked in: the org cannot afford to pay the founder market rate, and the founder cannot leave because no comparable role exists. (CapinCrouse, Charity Lawyer Blog, SSIR's "Real Salary Scandal.")
2. The cost shows up first as burnout, then as quality decay, then as departure. Pre-pandemic average nonprofit ED tenure was ~6 years; in the outdoor sector it is notably shorter for founder-EDs. (Moran Company, LUR Growth, ASU Lodestar Center.)
3. The cost to the org is asymmetric. The cost of replacing a founder-ED who burns out is 1.5–2× annual salary in search costs, lost institutional knowledge, and donor-relationship resets. The cost of paying her appropriately for years 3–7 is a small fraction of that.
4. Donors and sponsors notice the founder's salary. It signals organizational maturity and self-sustaining intent. A $0 founder salary is read by sophisticated donors as "this is a hobby." An $80K founder salary at a $400K org is read as "this is a serious institution that knows how to compensate skilled labor."
5. The IRS framework actively allows above-market comp for founders with rare skills, when documented. "Reasonable compensation" under IRC §4958 explicitly contemplates the value of skills that would be hard to procure elsewhere — multi-language, niche-domain, founder-relationship-equity skills are exactly the case the safe harbor was written for.

Why this applies to GEA specifically

Sunny is not the typical nonprofit founder. Most nonprofit founders' below-market comp reflects market-replaceable skill plus an idealistic willingness to forgo income. Sunny's skill cluster is genuinely scarce:

• Bilingual EN/DE with native-level brand-storytelling fluency in both. The LOA German-language keynote alone produced category exclusivity that the org would otherwise pay $50K+ to acquire.
• Technical alpinist credible to IFMGA guides and 8000m-peak community. This is the credential that makes Summit Scholarship serious to its recipients and its sponsors.
• EOFT-circuit access with a near-nomination for Adventure of the Year. The $20K prize is the small part; the 50+ city screening pipeline is the asset.
• Sponsor-relationship intimacy with LOWA (Marco — commercial GM — personal relationship), Fjällräven (PR-agency-mediated rescue), Deuter, Title IX. These are not transferable to a new hire. They walk with Sunny.

If Sunny disappears tomorrow, GEA's $170K revenue does not stay at $170K. It probably collapses to $30–50K of foundation grants + a residual scholarship pipeline. The org's revenue is in significant part personal-brand revenue. That is uncomfortable to look at and also load-bearing for any honest comp conversation.

The specific founder-ED recommendation

1. Adopt a board-approved shadow ED salary of $85K for FY26, escalating per §3's revenue triggers, and document the comparability data (this memo) in board minutes.
2. Realize cash comp at the highest level the surplus and operating reality permit — likely $20–40K in cash this fiscal year, scaling per §3.
3. Book the unrealized portion as in-kind contributed services in board financials. (Note: not deductible to Sunny per IRS, but disclosed for honest cost-structure visibility.)
4. Build a "comp catch-up" reserve of 5–10% of annual surplus to fund retroactive realization of the shadow gap when fiscal capacity allows. This is rare but legitimate for founder-EDs and well within IRS norms when documented.
5. The Rachel fix is part of this. Sunny paying Rachel personally is a hidden founder-subsidy that distorts every comp conversation. Move Rachel to org payroll in the next 90 days — the budget exists, and it should be the highest-priority single action on this memo.
6. Re-examine annually. When revenue triples (year 4 target), the shadow + cash should converge to the $130–150K range per §3. The board should commit now to that glidepath in writing, even if cash realization lags by 12 months at each step.

The thing the board should sit with for a minute

GEA does not currently have a $50K surplus. GEA has a $50K cash position on top of a ~$60–90K deferred founder-comp liability that is not on the books. This is not a problem in itself — founder-funded ramp is normal — but it is the difference between "we are slightly profitable" and "we are running at break-even on subsidized labor." The first framing leads to over-investment in growth; the second leads to proper urgency on revenue diversification and on building the org's ability to operate without Sunny.

That urgency is good. The retreat already named the right priorities (AI infrastructure first, then revenue programs). This memo's only addition is: do it knowing the founder subsidy is real, finite, and should not be planned around indefinitely.

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§6Blind spots and new perspectives (Sunny asked for these)

These are the things I think the retreat conversation under-addressed.

Blind spot 1: the merger arithmetic flatters the budget

GEA's $170K is the sum of two predecessor org budgets. Operationally, the merged org carries roughly the workload of a $300–400K standalone (because most of the program work is independent of organizational unification). The comp envelope should be benchmarked against the workload-equivalent org size, which is closer to SheJumps's FY2022 ($667K) than its FY2018 ($360K). This actually argues for higher cash comp than the conservative read of "size" alone suggests.

Blind spot 2: the Gridlit role-cost math is upside down

Gridlit produces ~$2K of profit per year. Roxy's logistics time on it is probably 4–8 hours per month, or 50–100 hours per year. At a $30/hr loaded labor cost, that's $1,500–3,000 of labor on a $2K profit. Add Alison's packing time and the program is at break-even or slightly negative in true cost. The retreat said "Keep" — but Keep without a growth path means the org is paying for the privilege of doing the work. Either commit to growth (price the marketing investment that gets it from 60 → 200 subscribers) or de-scope to once/year.

Blind spot 3: tenure vs. impact in the Angie / Roxy comparison

Roxy has been part of the predecessor orgs longer than Angie. There will be a natural impulse to keep Angie's comp at or below Roxy's. That impulse is wrong. Angie's role drives revenue growth; Roxy's role supports brand equity. Both matter, but the comp-to-revenue-attribution ratio favors Angie meaningfully. Don't let tenure win against impact in the cash decision. (Honor tenure with non-cash recognition: title, time off, board exposure.)

Blind spot 4: the AI dividend has not been priced into comp scenarios

The retreat treats AI as cost-saving infrastructure ("Angie shifts from manual execution to strategy"). But AI also raises the productivity of every retained FTE — which means the org will need fewer future hires than the SheJumps trajectory implies. The comp roadmap above assumes near-term hiring restraint (no new FTE until $400K). The corollary is that surviving staff get higher per-person comp earlier than SheJumps's curve suggests. Build that into raise expectations: Angie at year-3 should be at a SheJumps-year-5 number, not a SheJumps-year-3 number.

Blind spot 5: D&O, founder PII, and Sunny-personal-payroll-Rachel are all the same risk class

The retreat surfaced the D&O gap. This memo surfaces the Rachel hidden-payroll issue. Both are symptoms of the same root cause: the org has not yet built the operational scaffolding (HR, insurance, payroll governance) that converts "Sunny does everything" into "the institution holds the risk." Comp planning should pair with a parallel workstream on governance hygiene. Until that exists, every comp decision exposes Sunny personally to fiduciary and tax risk that the org should be absorbing.

Blind spot 6: sponsor concentration risk should affect comp pacing, not amount

The retreat correctly flagged LOWA-concentration risk (~$45K of $170K cash = ~27% of revenue from one sponsor). The instinct is to use that as a reason for comp restraint. The better read is: it should affect pacing — don't commit to multi-year comp escalations tied to LOWA-dependent revenue — but it shouldn't reduce the amount of comp once revenue exists. Use one-year comp commitments with annual review, not multi-year contracts, until sponsor diversification crosses the 25%-from-largest-source threshold.

New perspective: GEA's most valuable HR asset is the operating-partner network, not the staff

Wild Women Trail Marathons, All Expeditions, Upwards Transitions, She Moves Mountains, Mahua Collective — the retreat identified these as multipliers. They are also a shadow workforce that the comp memo would be wrong to ignore. The org should formalize at least one of them (likely All Expeditions, given Sunny's January transition) as a contract delivery partner with a defined per-engagement fee. This converts "favor-based capacity" into "budgeted capacity" and removes Sunny's personal relationship as the only thing holding the supply chain together. Estimate $10–25K/yr at current scale, growing with the program calendar.

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§7Compact decision matrix for the board

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SourcesSources

• Candid 2025 Nonprofit Compensation Report
• Candid press release on Nonprofit Compensation Report
• SheJumps Form 990 filings, ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
• Outdoor Alliance Form 990, ProPublica
• Big City Mountaineers ED job posting + GuideStar profile
• Cnpc.coach 2026 Nonprofit ED Salary data by size/location
• Avra Search Partners 2025 Nonprofit ED/CEO Hiring Trends
• Giddings Consulting Group Nonprofit Salary Guide 2026
• Nonprofit Marketing Guide median comms director salaries
• Mission Edge: Compensation Transparency & Competitive Pay
• LUR Growth: Why Nonprofit EDs Burn Out
• Moran Company: Preventing Nonprofit ED Burnout
• CapinCrouse: Nonprofit Founder Compensation Considerations
• Charity Lawyer Blog: To Pay or Not to Pay — Compensating Nonprofit Founders
• Wagenmaker & Oberly: Nonprofit Founder Compensation
• Stanford SSIR: The Real Salary Scandal
• Hurwit & Associates: Intermediate Sanctions Checklist
• Law Firm for Non-Profits: Inside Nonprofit CEO Pay
• IRS Schedule J (Form 990) instructions
• PayScale: Program Manager Non-Profit 2026 salary data
• ZipRecruiter: Non-Profit Writer / Newsletter Writer hourly rates
• Internal Notion retreat sources: Where we're going, Executive Director Update, Vision session