Press release
Compensation survey expands to 38 roles
The 2025 Staff Compensation Survey adds two roles to last year's 36, giving association executives a wider benchmark for hiring and retention decisions.
WASHINGTON — NANA released its Staff Compensation Survey 2025 today, covering 38 association staff roles, up from 36 in the 2024 edition.
What's new this year
Director of Research Inês Carvalho-Reyes said the two added roles, reflecting job titles member associations reported using but that the prior survey didn't capture separately, came directly from feedback on the 2024 edition.
Every year we add roles, it's because members told us their own job title wasn't on the list and they had to guess which line was the closest match. Guessing defeats the point of a benchmark.
— Inês Carvalho-Reyes, Director of Research
What the survey covers
The survey reports median base salary, bonus prevalence, and benefits data by role, organization size, and region for the 38 covered positions, spanning executive, program, membership, communications, and operations roles common across association staffs.
Executive roles, including chief executive and chief operating officer
Program and membership roles, including membership coordinators and program managers
Communications and digital roles
Operations, finance, and administrative roles
Data comes from association staff directly, not from job postings, which Carvalho-Reyes's team says produces more reliable figures than postings that often list a salary range wider than what organizations actually pay.
How associations use it
Executive directors and HR staff use the survey to benchmark offers for open positions and to check whether current staff compensation has kept pace with the sector. Associations report the survey most often during annual budget planning and when writing a job description for a newly created role, where no internal comparison point exists.
The survey is fielded annually in the spring, with results released each June. Carvalho-Reyes's team plans to continue adding roles in future editions as member feedback identifies gaps, while keeping the core role list stable enough that year-over-year comparisons remain meaningful for roles the survey has tracked since 2024.
The full survey is available in the resource library.
Reading the numbers by size
The survey reports compensation broken out by organization size as well as role, and Carvalho-Reyes cautioned against comparing across bands without adjusting for it. A membership coordinator role at an 8,000-member association with a 30-person staff typically carries more responsibility, and a higher median salary, than the same title at a 400-member association with three staff, a gap the survey's size bands are designed to surface rather than obscure into a single blended median.
Region matters as well: cost-of-living differences mean a role's median salary in a major metro area can run meaningfully higher than the same role at an association headquartered in a smaller city, even when responsibilities are identical. Carvalho-Reyes's team recommends associations benchmark against the size and region bands closest to their own circumstances rather than the topline median across all responding organizations.
About NANA
The National Association of National Associations (NANA) is the professional society for association executives, boards, and staff, providing research, peer community, and advocacy for the people who run the organizations that hold civic life together. Founded in 1998, NANA represents hundreds of member organizations and serves more than 2 million professionals across six regional chapters. NANA is headquartered at 1000 Association Blvd, Washington, DC.