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2018 State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey Results Now Available

May 17, 2018

Jamie Schloegel, Chief Executive OfficerBy Jamie Schloegel, Chief Executive Officer

The State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey has been administered to thousands of nonprofit leaders across the country by the Nonprofit Finance Fund since 2010. The survey has become a widely cited barometer of the operational and financial health of our country’s nonprofits.

The 2018 survey results are now live, and can be found here: https://nff.org/learn/survey#results

The results show the state of the NPO sector is resilient. Almost 3,400 NPO leaders from large and small organizations aimed at addressing a wide-array of missions responded this year. Here is a summary of their responses shared in a recent GuideStar blog post:

  • Demand is still growing faster than our organizations can meet it. It’s very challenging to cover the full costs of what the country relies on us to do and keep the lights on. The sector needs more hands to do all the work and more competitive pay to attract them.
  • It’s become very hard to reach many people who need help but are afraid to ask for it. Two-thirds of us said the federal government’s 2017 actions and words made clients’ lives harder, not easier. Affordable housing is the most frequently cited community need in communities rural and urban across 48 of our 50 states.
  • The sector is meeting these chronic and real-time challenges with characteristic resiliency, creativity, and compassion. Nonprofits are adding staff, raising pay, expanding programs, and increasing our focus on advocacy, racial inequity, and the diversity of our leaders and staffs. And three-quarters of responding organizations closed out 2017 at break-even or better.

Our experiences and conversations here at LCF with local NPO reps echo these results.