It's 2012 – Time to Participate in Fair Pay for Northern California Nonprofits: the 2012 Compensation and Benefits Survey, the best survey of its kind in the country!

431 agencies, reporting on over 23,000 jobs, participated in the 2011 survey, making it the largest and most robust report in the survey's 33-year history!

Here's how your agency can benefit from the 2012 survey:

• Current, local compensation data on 167 jobs often found at nonprofit organizations
• Base pay levels and bonus/incentive pay for each job with details by annual operating budget, location within Northern California, number of employees and primary field of service
• Employee benefits in detail: paid time off, insurance, retirement
• Salary increases over past year and expected during next year
• Policies with respect to on-call work, overtime, shift differentials, pay for bilingual skills, introductory periods, performance reviews and more.

The survey also helps your agency find out how the local nonprofit community is coping with the recession. Here are some questions the survey can help nonprofit managers answer:

• How do the salaries paid at our organization compare with those paid at similar, local organizations?
• Are organizations still freezing salary levels, or are more planning to increase salaries during the next year?
• How common are bonuses or incentive pay for jobs like ours?
• Are organizations shifting benefits costs to employees?
• How do pay levels for male and female Executive Directors compare?

And if that's not enough incentive for you, consider this.

Since 2001 the IRS has encouraged charities to go through a set of steps to ensure that executive compensation is set appropriately. On the revised form 990, the IRS has standardized reporting to make comparing salaries easier and requires charities to provide information about the process they use to set the salaries of employees who receive $150,000 or more in total compensation.

The 2012 survey will help you navigate through this new process and will be a primary tool to help your board of directors document the rationale they use to set the salaries they pay their executives.

The survey exists only because of you Northern California nonprofits who take the time to participate in it year after year. In a large part, it's really your survey.

For more information, click on www.nonprofitcomp.com.