5 Steps Toward Nonprofit Salary Transparency

1. Know where you are in the regional or national museum job market. Does your organization lead, lag or match?

2. Find the gaps. Look for the gaps created by age, race and gender. It's likely you have them since they are there for the world to see on AAM's salary survey. Make a plan and adjust.

3. Most people think they are better at their job than they really are. Determine how your organization measures performance. Then determine how your organization rewards stellar performance, and what constitutes unacceptable performance. Hint: Measuring performance is not waiting until a lackluster employee decamps.

4. Look at the total package. Who on your staff gets the opportunities? Who travels, who speaks, who gets sent for further training? How does the museum help with that? Are those opportunities open to all?

5. You may want to begin by creating a salary banding program where jobs are grouped and ranked, and salaries within a specific group are listed as a range. Is this a big step? You betcha. Is it done outside of public institutions in the museum world? Not that we know of. Will it help? We believe it will. Museums run on people. Good staff make great museums, and good staff deserve equitable salaries. Organizations who are open about the fact they are closing the gender gap, conscious of performance measures, and creating opportunities for personal growth, are the organizations that will attract the best and most diverse employees. They are the ones that will not only survive, but thrive. Tell us what you think. Joan Baldwin Image: PwC, "The Reward of Gender Pay Equity Through the Lens of Data and Analytics," 2016. Accessed October 22, 2018.