Salary-time - How Much Do Aid Workers Actually Earn?
The truth shall set you free – so, in the interests of full disclosure, I’m writing this with an agenda. I think that aid work requires more than compassion, more than just feeling for your fellow-man. These are necessary but far from sufficient. Humanitarian staff need certain skills and competencies. In other words, we’re professionals.
Yet, somehow this often gets lost along the way. (Paging Mr. Kristof, Mr. Nicholas Kristof.) You can’t deliver aid without qualified staff, or at least you can’t deliver aid particularly effectively. Especially in places like Afghanistan and Darfur, Congo and Zimbabwe – places where nothing goes quite as planned, and the fit always eventually hits the shan.
And if you want to retain qualified staff – at least past their twenties – you need to pay a decent wage. Which some NGOs do, and some do not.
As one friend recently wrote:
“I don’t actually have a problem with NGOs paying their staff properly. I think it helps to attract highly skilled, educated and experienced staff. In a highly complex situation…you don’t just need people who care and are committed. You really need people with the right mix of experience and education…I think that decent staff salaries [are] simply part of the equation for an organization to achieve its mission.”
One way to judge a fair wage is to look at what others doing similar work actually earn.
To that end, in a completely and utterly unscientific poll, I’ve asked a number of people across different organizations about NGO starting salaries.
As with the post on security trainings, this survey was far from comprehensive, and some of the information is perhaps out of date.
It’s also difficult to compare salaries across organizations, since the benefit packages also differ. For instance, some organizations pay for housing, some do not. Where possible, I’ll try to note benefits as well.
Finally, it’s critical to keep in mind that the vast majority of work in the field is done by national staff, who also run most of the risks. National staff are often paid less than international staff, though many organizations are trying to harmonize their salary scales.
That said, the anecdotal figures below at least give a sense of starting overseas salaries at a few select NGOs.
Program Managers (Grade H) start at around $48,000
Sector Coordinators (Grade G) start at around $55,000
To try and equalize overseas and domestic salaries, CARE deducts “hypothetical” housing and tax costs from overseas salaries. I remember these coming to roughly one-quarter of my salary, another friend reported that it was as high as one-third.
Staff at CARE USA headquarters sometimes make less than $40,000 / year. Other CARE International members work off different salary scales.
(Overseas advocacy positions are relatively well-paid, at least within CARE – for instance, I think I started out in the low $60,000s as the Afghanistan Advocacy Coordinator.)
International Rescue Committee (IRC)
IRC recently did a salary review, so these figures might be somewhat out-of-date. That said, it seems that the starting salaries overseas are usually around $25,000, though two people reported lower figures around $20,000.
Project Coordinators seem to start at around $36,000 to $38,000.
As far as I could tell, IRC does pay for housing.
Mercy Corps has also conducted a salary review, so again these figures might be somewhat out-of-date. That said, a Program Assistant at headquarters seems to earn in the high $20,000s to low $30,000s, with similar staff in DC and in the field earning slightly more.
One person reported that a Program Officer earns in the mid-$40,000s.
I’m not sure what benefits package this includes.
As far as I could tell, the salary range is as follows:
$35,000 - $40,000 (0-5 years experience in the US)
$45,000 - $60,000 (5-10 years experience)
$70,000 - $100,000 (10-20 years experience)
I’m not sure what benefits package this includes.
Most international staff are at least at the C2 pay grade, which seems to earn between £18,000 to £24,000. The next highest grade (C1) earns around £33,000. Oxfam covers housing and health insurance and, I believe, any tax costs.
Other NGOs
Starting overseas salaries at other NGOs range from $18,000 at the low end to mid $40,000s at the high end.
The UN salary scale is available here. The UN assesses what amount to taxes on staff salaries – the gross (before assessment) and net (after assessment) for various positions (P1 – P5) are included below.
Staff with dependents have a slightly lower assessment, and so take home slightly more in net pay than staff without dependents.
P-1– starting gross salary is $45,493; the net is $34,760
P-2– starting gross salary is $58,401; the net is $43,662
P-3– starting gross salary is $71,729; the net is $52,408
P-4– starting gross salary is $87,790; the net is $63,052
P-5– starting gross salary is $106,907; the net is $75,432
Two friends offered further details:
“The common perspective is, of course, that the UN is where you go when you want to make lots of money. I have to say that's not necessarily true. Yes, it is true that I make significantly more now what I was making with [my NGO], but my personal expenses have dramatically risen as well. With [my NGO], I didn't pay housing, food, transport, my cell phone bill or the like. Here in [the field with the UN], I pay housing, local transport, food, utilities, cell phone, etc. I haven't done the math specifically, but I know that given the increased expenses, the true ‘take home pay’ hasn't increased as much as most would think. (I think the only mid-level UN jobs that are the true ‘money in the bank’ are the field postings in ongoing emergencies ... the salary is even higher and expenses (and lifestyle) less).”
“My own personal thoughts are that development and humanitarian workers are not as badly paid within the more ‘professional’ organizations as people think. A big comparison has always been with the salaries offered by the UN – but the UN does not provide the same housing, education and car allowances that many NGOs do, plus there is a 30% ‘tax’ on UN salaries, by the UN themselves. Expatriates who work for the bigger NGOs overseas tend to do very well.”
[For lack of a better photo - yours truly in South Sudan]
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