Leadership Pathways and Aspirations

Career advancement is not experienced equally across the nonprofit workforce.

White respondents report receiving promotions, performance-based raises, and bonuses more frequently than BIPOC respondents, suggesting that advancement opportunities continue to be distributed unevenly across racial groups.

At the same time, respondents distinguish between career-related factors and personal identities when considering what shapes career advancement. Professional track record, ambition, educational background, and professional networks are viewed as the strongest positive influences, while race, social and economic class, gender identity, sexual orientation, caregiving responsibilities, religion, and disability are more often perceived as barriers or mixed influences. Across all four Race to Lead survey waves, BIPOC respondents consistently report that identity plays a greater role in shaping career advancement than white respondents, although these perceptions declined for both groups between 2016 and 2022 before rebounding modestly in 2025.

Taken together, these patterns suggest that career advancement reflects more than individual qualifications or effort. Even when respondents identify merit-based factors as important drivers of advancement, persistent racial differences in both advancement outcomes and perceptions of identity indicate that opportunities are experienced differently across groups, underscoring the continued importance of addressing structural barriers to equitable career mobility.

Career mobility is increasingly happening between organizations rather than within them.

Most nonprofit employees remain in the same role from year to year, but among those who do change jobs, movement between organizations has become more common than internal advancement. Between 2022 and 2025, the share of respondents who changed organizations increased, while movement into new roles within the same organization declined, suggesting that career mobility increasingly occurs across organizations rather than within them.

Workers most often report leaving roles in pursuit of higher pay or new professional challenges, while one in five cite limited opportunities for advancement. Work-life balance and values alignment also rank among the leading reasons for changing jobs, indicating that both career growth and organizational culture influence mobility decisions.

Together, these patterns suggest that nonprofit organizations may be losing talent when internal advancement opportunities are limited or when workplaces fail to provide competitive compensation and supportive environments. Strengthening career pathways – whether within organizations or through skill-building opportunities that support mobility across the sector – may improve retention while expanding equitable opportunities for advancement.

Leadership capacity extends well beyond formal leadership titles.

More than four in ten staff respondents see themselves as leaders within their organizations, despite not holding management or executive positions, and respondents across all role levels report meaningful leadership contributions through mentoring, strategy, relationship building, advocacy, fundraising, and other organizational responsibilities. Respondents across race and role levels report meaningful leadership contributions, suggesting that leadership extends beyond formal authority.

At the same time, interest in executive leadership is divided. White many respondents express interest in pursuing an Executive Director or CEO role, substantial numbers remain uncertain or uninterested. Among those not interested, the most common reasons reflect satisfaction with their current role or concerns about the sustainability of executive leadership – including work-life balance, inadequate organizational support, and the structure of executive roles themselves. Notably, more than one-third of respondents who are not interested in a traditional executive role indicate they would reconsider if the role were structured differently.

Together, these findings suggest that the nonprofit sector’s leadership challenge is not simply identifying future leaders – it is creating executive roles that people view as sustainable, supported, and worth pursuing. Many nonprofit professionals already demonstrate leadership every day, but organizational structures and expectations may limit whether they choose to seek formal executive leadership.

Nonprofit employees report substantial unmet demand for leadership development and career support.

Coaching, external mentoring, financial management training, wellness supports, and management training rank among the most desired resources, while comparison of supports received and desired reveals meaningful gaps across many areas of leadership development.

Those unmet needs are not experienced equally. Staff generally report larger support gaps than managers or executive leaders, and respondents of color often report greater unmet support needs than white respondents within the same organizational level. These patterns suggest that access to leadership development opportunities remains uneven across the nonprofit workforce.

Caregivers also identify practical workplace accommodations as critical to making leadership more accessible. Flexible work arrangements, organizational cultures that normalize caregiving, paid leave, and reasonable workload expectations emerge as some of the most frequently selected supports, reinforcing that leadership development depends not only on training and mentorship but also on workplace policies that enable people to pursue and sustain leadership roles.