Who Works in the Sector?

The Race to Lead sample has become increasingly diverse over time, reflecting a nonprofit workforce that is more racially diverse and more likely to include people with multiple identities and lived experiences.

By 2025, people of color comprised a majority of respondents (52%), with Black respondents alone accounting for more than one-quarter of the sample (26%). At the same time, women continued to make up the majority of respondents — consistent with the broader demographic profile of the nonprofit workforce. The sharp decline in the White share of the sample from 61% in 2022 to 48% in 2025 likely reflects a change in who participated rather than a rapid transformation of the sector itself. In a political moment marked by backlash against DEI and heightened scrutiny of equity-focused organizations, the 2025 sample may represent what we think of as the engaged sector: workers with a clear stake in questions of equity, leadership, and organizational change.

Other dimensions of identity and experience have shifted as well. LGBTQ+ identification increased from 21% in 2016 to 31% in 2025, while disability identification rose from 10% in 2019 to 26% in 2025. These patterns may reflect some combination of real changes in workforce composition, greater comfort with self-identification, and the characteristics of the 2025 sample itself. Millennials remain the largest generation in the sample (46%), Gen Z respondents have grown to 12%, and nearly one-third of respondents are either immigrants themselves (21%) or the children of immigrants (10%). Together, these patterns underscore that the nonprofit workforce is not a monolith. Understanding who is represented – and who chooses to participate – is essential for interpreting the experiences, inequities, and leadership dynamics explored throughout the Insight Hub.

Race to Lead respondents represent a workforce with substantial nonprofit experience and a strong concentration in management and executive leadership roles.

Across all four survey waves, managers have consistently made up the largest share of respondents, while nearly three-quarters of the 2025 sample (73%) identified as either managers or executives. At the same time, the survey captures workers at every stage of the leadership pipeline: staff roles are most common among early-career professionals, management dominates the mid-career years, and executive leadership becomes increasingly prevalent among senior- and veteran-career respondents.

These patterns suggest that the survey primarily reflects the experiences of nonprofit professionals who have built sustained careers in the sector. Mid-career workers remain the largest career-stage group, and the combined share of senior- and veteran-career respondents exceeds the share of early-career professionals in every survey wave. Together, the role-level and career-stage distributions illustrate a workforce that is both experienced and positioned to share organizational decision-making.

Frontline work is also distributed unevenly across the workforce. In 2025, respondents of color were substantially more likely than White respondents to work in frontline roles (31% versus 23%), highlighting how direct service and community-facing responsibilities continue to be distributed unevenly across racial groups. At the same time, frontline status is based on the type of work someone does – not their position within an organization’s hierarchy. Frontline workers are represented across staff, management, and executive leadership roles, underscoring that direct engagement with communities is not limited to entry-level positions. Together, these patterns suggest that race shapes not only who works in the nonprofit sector, but also the kinds of work people are most likely to perform throughout their careers.

Race to Lead respondents work in organizations of many sizes, fields, and geographic locations, and these characteristics have remained relatively stable across survey waves.

Across all four survey waves, respondents have been concentrated in midsized organizations, with organizations operating on budgets between $500,000 and $5 million accounting for roughly half of respondents. Smaller organizations and very large institutions represent smaller shares of the sample, although respondents continue to come from organizations spanning the full spectrum of nonprofit budgets.

Respondents also represent a wide range of nonprofit focus areas. Direct services and health organizations account for the largest share of respondents, followed by advocacy, organizing, and civic engagement organizations. Philanthropy and capacity-building organizations, community and economic development organizations, and education and research organizations also make up substantial portions of the sample, illustrating the breadth of sectors represented in Race to Lead.

The geographic distribution of respondents reflects the national reach of the survey. Respondents come from organizations in every state and several U.S. territories, with particularly strong concentrations in California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, and Texas. These patterns reflect both the size of nonprofit ecosystems in those states and the strength of Race to Lead’s partner and network relationships. Rather than representing a single region or subsector, the survey captures experiences from across the country.

One notable shift in organizational context has been the growth of shared leadership structures. In 2019, fewer than 7% of respondents worked in organizations using co-leadership or shared leadership models. By 2025, nearly one-quarter of respondents reported working in organizations with shared leadership arrangements. Although single executive director or CEO models remain the dominant structure, the increasing share of respondents working in organizations with shared leadership arrangements suggests that alternative approaches to nonprofit leadership are becoming a more common feature of the sector.