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Introduction

Right now, somewhere in Canada, someone is stocking a food bank shelf to support the 2.2 million food bank visits across the country each month.

Someone else is making up a shelter bed for one of the over 19,300 Canadians who will seek refuge in one tonight. Someone is answering a call on a crisis line - just one of over a million call and texts the 9-8-8 Suicide Crisis Helpline has fielded since it launched in 2023. Someone else is helping a newcomer feel like Canada is home - one of nearly 400,000 permanent residents that Canada now accepts each year. Someone is providing Canada's future with an early education -  caring for one of nearly a million children in child care nation-wide each year.

Someone else is...

The list goes on, and so do the lives being touched. This is Canada's nonprofit sector.

It is not a small corner of Canadian life. It is the invisible scaffolding holding up the most fragile moments this country has - every day, in every province and territory, whether you have ever needed it or not.

And that distinction matters, because you don't have to set foot in a shelter or a food bank to depend on this sector. A country where fewer people fall through the cracks is a safer, healthier, more stable country for everyone. Every dollar spent keeping someone safely housed is a dollar not spent on emergency rooms, policing, or long-term chronic care. Every family that gets support before a crisis is a family that stays in the workforce, in school, and in the community, instead of falling out of it. The nonprofit sector isn't just a safety net for other people, it's the floor everyone in this country is standing on, whether they know it or not. 

But none of it runs on its own. Someone is holding up that floor, and in Canada, we know that our nonprofit sector is overwhelmingly a woman. Imagine Canada reports that women make up 70% of the sector's workforce. In our Insights data at YMCA WorkWell, women represent 80% of all nonprofit respondents - a share that is on par with the Canadian health care industry.

The Canadian nonprofit sector isn't simply a sector that happens to employ a lot of women. It is a sector that has been built primarily on women's labour, and that should shape how you read everything that follows in this report.

This is a story about the women quietly holding together the critical parts of our Canadian communities that the market and the government don't fully reach. If they are struggling, under-resourced, and burning out - it isn't an isolated HR issue inside a few organizations. It's a crack along the foundations of the communities we all share.

And that's why this story is so important to tell.

Why This Report Focuses on Women

The Canadian nonprofit sector is incredibly diverse. That diversity is a big reason why the sector can have such a marked impact on the well-being of so many marginalized communities across the country. Yet the sector still struggles to deliver equitable employee experiences. Our data at YMCA WorkWell suggests that nonprofit employee experiences differ in real and important ways across social identities, including race, disability, sexual orientation, age, and immigration status. These experiences also do not exist in isolation, and the intersection of these identities can have a particularly strong impact on employee experiences. Every one of those stories matters, and many would merit a report of their own. This isn't the last word on these differences; it's one chapter.

We chose to focus on women and female-identifying employees for a specific reason: They sit at a very unusual intersection. Women make up the vast majority of the nonprofit workforce, yet they also report heavier and more strained employee experiences than men. That is something we don't see often: the dominant group within a sector also being the group reporting worse experiences. When those who make up most of the sector are also among those faring worse within it, that's a story worth telling on its own terms.

To support clarity and consistency across the report, it's important to outline how "women" was defined within our data. Our standard gender identity question asks: "Which option(s) best describes your gender? Please select all that apply," , followed by a list of potential identities (in alphabetical order: Man, Non-Binary, Questioning, Trans, Two-Spirit, Woman, plus an "I prefer to self-identify" text option). In this report, we included anyone who selected "woman" in their survey response - whether it was the only identity they selected or one they held alongside another, such as non-binary. In other words, if "woman" was part of how a person identified themselves in their survey response, their experience and voice is captured in this report. When we refer to "women" throughout this report, that is the community we are referring to.

About This Partnership

Like many partnerships, the idea for the this report started with simply conversations and then blossomed into something better between two teams with common goals.

YMCA WorkWell is the workplace well-being and culture arm of the YMCA, partnering with purpose-driven organizations across Canada to make workplaces better through data-driven insights and leader coaching. The Women's Nonprofit Network is a digital community of over 8,000 women across the Canadian nonprofit sector that elevates and champions the women powering our sector.

Both of our organizations have heard the same stories anectodally, over and over: women in this sector are exhausted, underpaid and stretched thin. And something about those experiences felt different from the usual burnout we see in the sector. Anecdotes alone don't drive change, but data often can. So this report combined both of our strengths: WorkWell's Insights and national-level data, with WNN's deep trust within the community it serves.

So let's talk about the data. The early trends we saw and the stories that made us so sure we had to do something about it, together.

The Signals That Caught Our Eye

Nonprofits make up nearly three quarters of our partners at YMCA WorkWell, and in the last 12 months, we collected employee experience and demographic data from nearly 14,000 nonprofit employees working across more than 60 nonprofit organizations across every province in Canada. While every organization has unique needs, just like every employee, there are important stories that only emerge when you view data across the entire sector at that scale.

And one trend that has caught our eye for some time is the well-being of women in the nonprofit sector, for a number of reasons.

We've noted that women make up a huge majority of the nonprofit sector, and 80% of our sample identified as women - 80%! Take a moment to imagine what that actually looks like in practice. If you were giving a town hall to 1,000 Canadian nonprofit employees from this sample, 801 of them would identify as women, 12 would identify as non-binary or gender diverse, and only 187 would identify as men.

 

When we're talking about 80% of a workforce, it becomes clear that we can't talk about the well-being of the Canadian nonprofit sector without talking about the well-being of the women in it.

But this representation is only one piece of a deeper story, and it's what comes next that makes this such an important story to tell. You might assume that women would be thriving in a sector they power - or at the very least, faring no worse than their male colleagues. It's often the majority who set the tone in a workplace - but the more we dug into the data, the clearer it became that was not the case.

So let's dig deeper.

Leadership Representation

While women made up 80% of our sample, they were less represented at senior leadership tables. Women comprised 80% of front line roles and 81% of supervisory roles - but their representation started to decline as you move up the organization - dropping to 74% of director and manager roles and 70% in senior leadership roles (VP and C-suite).


It's worth noting: this representation outpaces broader national averages. The most recent Statistics Canada Labour Force Report found that only 30% of senior leaders in Canada are women - meaning there were more than twice as many women in senior leader roles in our data compared to the national average. That progress is worth celebrating, yet the trend remains clear: male representation grows progressively as decision-making power, and crucially, compensation increase in nonprofit roles.

Employee Experience

The disparity extends beyond representation, too. When we shift to employee experience metrics, nonprofit women trailed behind nonprofit men on many of the key well-being metrics we measure on our YMCA WorkWell Insights Survey. 

2026 Report Graphics

It's important to note: there are clear similarities. For example, the percentage of women and men with healthy Engagement and Value Alignment scores was nearly identical - right around 80% for both genders. This suggests that women and men are equally engaged by and dedicated to their missions. That feeling of purpose has never been a concern in our sector - regardless of gender identity.

However, that equal commitment is met with unequal support. Women scored significantly lower than men in critical areas like Trust (with 64% of women reporting healthy scores compared to 74% of men), Well-Being (54% vs. 63%), and Appreciation (63% vs. 72%). In other words, our data suggests that women in the nonprofit sector are equally as committed as men, but experience less trust, lower well-being, and less frequent appreciation for their work.

Burnout & Emotional Labour

Women also report more frequent burnout in our data - with 24% of women reporting burnout "often" or "extremely often", compared to 15% of men - and 3 in 5 women (59%) reporting burnout at least "sometimes". Flip that around and the gap is just as stark: men are 1.4 times more likely to say they never burn out at all - despite working comparable roles.

And there's another, quieter gap that is worth naming: the emotional tax. We asked nonprofit employees how much their interactions with the customers/community members they serve impact their personal well-being at work. More than 3 in 4 women (76%) said these interactions at least "somewhat" impacted their personal well-being, compared to 62% of men - highlighting an emotional labour load that women are more likely to carry in client-facing, care-giving work every day. 

 

When you compile it all - there wasn't just one signal in our data. Despite making up the majority of the nonprofit sector, our data highlights multiple ways in which women still worse off when it comes to their actual employee experience. And that is exactly why this story matters.

Crucially, this isn't simply because women hold harder roles. When we account for role, department, tenure, and other factors, identifying as a woman in the nonprofit sector independently predicts a more strained employee experience. The gap holds.

The one exception occurs at the executive level, with senior leader women generally reporting outcomes that are more similar to those of senior leader men. The most significant gaps pool in the "squeezed middle" - women supervisors and managers who experience both front line strain and leadership pressures. It's here where the well-being gaps between men and women are the highest.

The Importance of Collecting New Voices

It's also important for us to hit pause. We know there is a limitation in our data because our nonprofit partners at YMCA WorkWell are not the norm. Our team supports employee well-being and culture - and that means that the organizations we partner with tend to have the kinds of leaders who are already investing in these areas.

That's not to say our partners don't have challenges - they still face the well-documented pressures affecting nonprofits across Canada. But they have leaders who care enough about their teams' well-being to take it seriously.

We know, unfortunately, that is not the reality in all nonprofits. That is important to consider when discussing sector-wide trends. If we want to tell the story of women's well-being in the Canadian nonprofit sector, every voice matters, not just those working for the organizations we are lucky enough to partner with.

So we captured more voices.

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Collecting Broader Voices:
Under-Resourced, Burnt Out & Underpaid

To collect new voices, in partnership with The Women's Nonprofit Network, we launched a dedicated community survey focused on the unique needs of women and female-identifying employees in the nonprofit sector that our standard Insights Survey doesn't reach. Areas like financial security, caregiving responsibilities, life outside of work, and what it actually feels like to be a woman building a career in this sector.

In total, we heard from 892 women and female-identifying people working across the Canadian nonprofit sector, with responses collected from every province and territory in the country. In this sample, 98% identified as women, with 2% identifying as both women and non-binary. One in five (20%) identified as racially diverse, and 15% identified as 2SLGBTQIA+. 

It's always worth noting: this was a voluntary community survey, which brings its own biases in who responds - particularly towards people who have strong feelings on the topic. This sample was relatively experienced (51% had spent more than a decade in the sector) and mid-career (74% were between 30 and 59), with many working in small to mid-sized nonprofits (40% worked at organizations with less than 40 employees), and over half (55%) held leadership roles from supervisors to senior leaders. 

There are many stories in this data, but we've chosen to focus on the most compelling and important ones rather than burying you with graphs. So let's return to what might be the key paradox at the centre of it all: the stark difference between value alignment and well-being in nonprofit women.

The Purpose Vs. Support Paradox

When we asked nonprofit women to rate their value alignment ("The mission and values of my organization resonate with me"), an astounding 82% reported healthy scores - 82%! Only 6% reported unhealthy scores. That is a remarkable level of value alignment that likely isn't a surprise to anyone working in the sector. Spending your days helping those in need generates a great deal of meaning and alignment - that is the passion that drives our sector.

And yet, the traditional models of employee engagement suggesting that strong value alignment will lead to a happy and healthy employees fall short here - 82% of respondents reported healthy value alignment scores and less than half that number reported healthy well-being scores ("Thinking back on the last three months, I feel as though my well-being has been supported at work"). 


Only 40% felt that their well-being had been adequately supported at work in the last three months. Less than half! Even among the 82% with healthy value alignment, less than half (46%) reported a healthy well-being score.

Take a moment to sit with that: more than half of the women who were fully bought into their organization's mission were running on empty and not feeling like their well-being was supported at work. That is a real indictment of the sector.

And the story doesn't change once we look at burnout in this sample - 38% of the women we surveyed experienced burnout "often" or "extremely often" in the last three months. That is nearly double the rate we see in our WorkWell data. When we include those reporting burnout "sometime", the number jumps to 74%.


That is 3 in 4 women in the nonprofit sector reporting at least semi-regular burnout - a sobering statistic, and a sign that something has to give if we are looking to provide a healthy employee experience to women in our sector.

The Root Causes of Burnout

Shining a light on burnout is important, as it highlights the scale of the issue. But equally important is understanding why burnout is so prevalent in women and female-identifying people in the nonprofit sector. So we did what you'd expect any researchers to do: we asked them.

We asked respondents who were experiencing burnout at least "sometimes" to identify their primary sources of stress at work from a list of 18 stressors. Stressors that the literature highlights as key sources of burnout like workload, compensation, a lack of recognition, and a lack of role clarity.

The top five responses paint a clear picture of a caring, but overworked and under-resourced workforce.

  
The top stressor identified by burnt out women was feeling too under-resourced to achieve their mission - and that explains the paradox. Even if we stopped there, it's telling that the top stressor references being both under-resourced and the ability to achieve their mission - and it helps explain this paradox between high value alignment and high burnout.

Decades of organizational research demonstrates that high value alignment is a significant source of job satisfaction (here's a meta-analysis of 172 studies if you really want to dig in). In the nonprofit sector, it helps employees find significant purpose and meaning in their work, and creates a real sense of urgency in achieving a mission that matters. When you care so much about the mission, however, it is particularly taxing when you don't have the resources to make real progress. It's the stress of impact being left on the table every day in a sector where you care so deeply about your mission. 

As we round out the rest of the top five, the picture becomes even clearer. Unsustainable workloads (56%), inadequate compensation (51%), inadequate appreciation (43%) and personal perfectionism (40%) were all cited by at least 2 in 5 burnt out respondents.

Consider these stressors together and the experience it creates. Women in the nonprofit sector care so deeply about their missions, but feel so under-resourced in their roles that they often take on significant workloads in an attempt to accomplish them - driven by their own high standards to do the work right. All the while, not feeling appropriately compensated or appreciated for how much of themselves they are giving to the cause.

It feels impossible to build a sustainable sector when that experience is the norm for so many of the people powering it. And that "so what" is spelled out quite clearly in the data too - both at the individual level and the sector-level.

Understanding the Impact: Financial Precarity

Let's start with a harsh reality: People typically choose to work in the nonprofit sector for the impact, not the compensation - something that has been labeled a "passion tax". Research has demonstrated that framing a job around "making the world a better place" leads candidates to accept lower pay, and people see it as more legitimate to ask passionate workers to take on more work for less. We see this clear as day in the Canadian nonprofit sector.

For example, Imagine Canada reports community nonprofit employees earn 31% less than the national average - almost $20,000 a year less. Ontario Living Wage Network outlines how the sector's average wage does not clear a living wage in Toronto, despite the fact that nearly three quarters of nonprofit staff hold some form of post-secondary education, significantly higher than the average across the Canadian economy (56%).

These challenges are even more pronounced for the majority of women who make up the sector. Imagine Canada reports that gender pay gaps account for much of the sector's wage deficit, with the gap between nonprofit salaries and the average Canadian salary being 6x greater for women compared to men. Charity Village reports that female nonprofit CEOs earn 20% less than their male counterparts, and 4-13% lower across other management levels.

For many women in our sector, this translates into real financial precarity - and we see that in our data too.

 
Across our entire sample, 62% of respondents - almost 2 in 3 - reported at least one indicator of financial precarity. For example, in the 12 months prior to the survey:

    • 43% had felt like they were living with ongoing financial instability
    • 33% had foregone retirement savings due to financial pressures
    • 29% had delayed or skipped medical care because of the cost
    • 28% had worried about meeting basic needs
    • 18% had worked more than one job to make ends meet

Think of that in context: ten nonprofit women walk into a meeting. Based on this data, six of them are living with some degree of financial precarity - whether that's having stopped saving for retirement, skipping care they've needed because they can't afford it, or working other jobs to make ends meet. This is the hidden cost of the passion tax - and it is being paid by hundreds of thousands of women in our sector.

The data is even more stark when you focus specifically on front line employees and supervisors. If you click on the "Front Line & Supervisors" button in the figure above, you'll see that 72% of the women in front line and supervisors roles reported at least one indicator of financial precarity, 3 in 5 felt like they were living with ongoing financial instability, 1 in 2 had worried about meeting basic needs, and 1 in 4 had worked more than one job to make ends meet. And for anyone who believes that leaders are immune from these challenges, 1 in 3 senior leaders, directors and managers felt like they were living with financial instability and reported foregoing retirement savings due to financial pressures. 

That is a lot of data, so let's put it plainly:

Women in the nonprofit sector are regularly battling financial insecurity - and it's not just a front line challenge. It affects women throughout the sector - even in senior roles.

Now when you consider that 38% of nonprofit women are burning out frequently, while simultaneously absorbing significant financial strain at home - that is a true sector-wide crisis. Beyond the anecdotes, the data shows that women in this sector are underpaid, under-resourced, and burnt out.

Primary Predictors of Financial Strain & Burnout

It's also important to highlight some important differences we see in the data - because the data suggests that some women face greater risks than others. It's worth commenting on what the data does and doesn't say: when you look at the data in isolation, there are definite demographic signals around areas like race, sexual orientation, and disability - however, when we test the data rigorously, there are two factors that clearly stood out above all the rest in predicting financial precarity and burnout.

1. Whether they have a partner at home

One factor stood out above all the rest when it came to predicting financial precarity and burnout in nonprofit women, and that was whether they lived with a partner.

In our sample, 69% of respondents lived with a partner or a spouse, while 31% did not - whether that was living alone, living with roommates, living with family, or another living arrangement. These two groups showed up very differently in the data.

Half of respondents without a partner at home reported ongoing financial instability (52%) - 15-points higher than those living with a partner (37%). Respondents without a partner at home were also twice as likely to worry about meeting their basic needs (20% compared to 40% - a 20-point difference). This makes sense, assuming that the single-income versus a dual-income distinction is the primary driver of these effects. One nonprofit income, paying almost $20,000 less than the Canadian norm on average, leaves no financial cushion. Having a second income in the home helps reduce that financial burden significantly.


What might be less intuitive, however, is the impact on burnout. Half of respondents (50%) without a partner at home reported burnout "often" or "extremely often" - 16-points higher than those 34% living with a partner (34%). Nonprofit women without a partner not only experienced more financial hardships at home, they also came home feeling more depleted and exhausted at the end of the day.

When we control for everything else, this was one of the greatest predictors of financial instability and burnout in the data. It paints a painful picture about the true reality of nonprofit salaries. Women in the nonprofit sector should not need a partner at home to feel like they are able to meet their basic needs, but our data suggests that might be a painful reality about our sector.

2. Whether they have caregiving responsibilities at home

The second factor that stood out above the rest was whether respondents had caregiving responsibilities at home. The Canadian Centre for Caregiving Excellence's recent Caring in Canada 2026 report highlighted how caregivers are the backbone of Canada's social care systems, and our data is no different. Across our sample, 61% of respondents were caregivers at home - i.e., they provided direct care at home for someone who depends on them. That's 3 in 5 women who after spending their days caring for their communities, went home to raise young children, support aging parents, care for a partner or adult child with a disability, or show up for a family member or friend who depends on them.


This means that caregiving in the norm, rather than the exception in the Canadian nonprofit sector. And caregivers faced notably higher strain - both financially and at work. For example:

    • 35% of caregiving women worried about meeting their basic needs in the last 12 months compared to 23% of women without caregiving responsibilities - a 12-point difference.

    • 40% of caregivers report foregoing retirement savings in that time compared to 27% of non-caregivers - a 13-point difference.

    • 69% of caregivers report that their caregiving responsibilities had a clear effect on their experiences at work. Only 7% said they didn't have any effect at all.

The weight of caregiving responsibilities often bleed into the workday in tangible ways. We recently wrote about what we call the "spillover ladder" - the step-by-step ways that caregiving responsibilities can spill over into the workday - and the data shows that the more caregiving bleeds into someone's workday, the more likely they are to report frequent burnout at work.

However, the impact was not felt equally across all caregivers. We examined the differences across three caregiving groups:

  • Nonprofit women caring only for young children
  • Nonprofit women caring only for an aging parent, partner, or adult child with a disability or chronic condition
  • The Sandwich Generation caring for both children and adult dependents

 

What did we find? Caring for children disrupts the workday the most. Seventy-seven percent of caregivers with children at home report that their caregiving responsibilities affect their experiences at work, 22-points higher than caregivers with disability and elder care responsibilities.

Disability and elder care, however, is more strongly linked to burnout. Women caring for adults had one of the highest burnout rates in our entire sample, with 44% reporting burnout "often" or "extremely often". This is compared to 30% of caregivers with children at home, essentially the same as nonprofit workers with no caregiving responsibilities at all.

This might feel counterintuitive, as you'd expect that the caregiving that most visibly disrupts the workday would be the one that burns people out the most. However, it all comes down to support and awareness. Caring for a child is demanding, but it’s bounded and socially recognized. Most managers understand school pickups and dentist appointments, and most Canadians can access parental benefits with job-protected leave guaranteed under labour laws. There may be regular disruption, but the support exists.

Caring for an aging parent or a partner with a chronic illness is different. It’s often open-ended, emotionally heavy, and largely invisible at work. "Eldercare leave" is almost unheard of with very limited government support. This type of caregiving rarely has discrete moments that fit into a calendar, it just quietly wears people down, week after week, with no built-in off-ramp. That's a recipe for burnout.

The Sandwich Generation, unfortunately, carries both of these challenges at once. Their work is disrupted at the same rate as the parent-only group and their burnout levels are equal to the group caring for adult dependents. They are squeezed on both fronts simultaneously, with no slack in either direction. Statistics Canada already counts roughly 1.8 million "sandwich" caregivers across Canada and that number is only set to grow as our population ages, with seniors projects to make up a quarter of Canadians by 2030.

And let's say the quiet part out loud: Women are still more likely to take on the majority of caregiving responsibilities, and even in households where there is a more even split in time, women still tend to carry the heavier, more recurring work of personal care. So when a sector that is primarily women asks its people to absorb more at work for less, it's asking them to do so on top of a second shift they were already carrying disproportionately at home.

Overall, this data provides a compelling case that working in the Canada nonprofit sector can comes at a significant cost - both in terms of financial well-being and overall well-being for many women. Importantly, however, these challenges also have a significant cost for our sector - and we need to be talking about it more.

The Cost of Our Compensation & Burnout Problem

People spend 90,000 hours of their lives at work, on average. Regardless of where we spend our own 90,000 hours, we all deserve to feel healthy at work and we all deserve a living wage. The nonprofit sector is comprised of hundreds of thousands of highly engaged, purpose-driven Canadians doing critical work in our communities - work that literally changes lives. If they cannot be healthy at work, nonprofit leaders are not succeeding in their jobs and that should be enough to raise alarm bells and warrant immediate action.

However, we also understand that inspiring action often requires putting literal dollars and cents to these problems. And so let's do the math on what is often one the most under-appreciated organizational costs: turnover.

The nonprofit workforce is the lynchpin that holds the entire sector together. No matter how innovative or revolutionary our new strategic plans are, how we integrate AI into our processes or streamline our operations, the progress and impact of a service-first sector will always be driven by its people first. And that's why the success of the Canadian nonprofit sector is dependent on our ability to recruit - and meaningfully retain - the right people.

Retention is not a new challenge in the Canadian nonprofit sector. For example, the Ontario Nonprofit Network's 2024 State of the Sector report found that the majority of nonprofits struggled with both recruitment and retention in the past year. The reality is, people who feel underpaid and burnout are often the first people to start considering their exit - a trend we've reported on in our data before. And it's exactly what we see across the women in this sample too.

To better understand the retention risk of women in the sector, we wanted to answer two critical questions:

    1. What percentage of women are considering leaving the nonprofit sector altogether?

    2. What percentage of women are looking to stay within the nonprofit sector but leave their current organization?

Let's start at the sector level. We asked all respondents: "Do you intend to be working in the nonprofit sector in 12 months?" - and the responses were staggering. 


One in four (26%) of the women we surveyed were considering leaving the sector entirely in the next 12 months - with 7% having already made up their mind and an additional 19% considering leaving, but still unsure. That is a quarter of the workforce. Importantly, this finding does not change across leadership levels. Regardless of whether we are talking about senior leaders, middle managers, or front line employees, at least 20% of the women we measured were considering leaving their role. We often talk about the institutional knowledge organizations lose when someone leaves - but when experienced women leave the nonprofit sector altogether, that institutional knowledge leaves our sector too.

We then asked the remaining 76% who intended to stay within the nonprofit sector: "Do you intend to be working at your current organization in six months?" - and saw similar trends. A further 18% were considering leaving their current organization in the next half a year - with 4% already certain of leaving, and another 14% considering leaving.

 

Let's take a moment to consider those tow data points together. In total, more than 1 in 3 of the nonprofit women we surveyed (35%) were either questioning their future in the sector or questioning their future at their current organization.

That is a significant number and it should concern every nonprofit leader.

So we wanted to validate our hypothesis one more time. If value alignment and engagement are so high among women in the nonprofit sector, why does the sector have such a clear retention risk? We asked every respondent who was considering leaving the sector: "What are the main reasons why you are considering leaving the sector?"  and asked them to select every reason from a list of 18 sector turnover drivers that applied to them.

We also asked every respondent who was considering leaving their organization: "What are the main reasons why you are considering leaving your organization?"  and asked them to select every reason from a list of 15 organizational turnover drivers that applied to them.

The trends across both questions are remarkably similar, and they come back to the same story: Compensation and burnout are driving women out of the nonprofit sector and out of their organizations. Compensation was far and away the primary source of turnover intentions, with 3 in 5 respondents referencing pay as a key reason why they were considering leaving - particularly relative to the skills and experience that they bring to their role. They didn't just feel underpaid, they feel underpaid compared to the value and experience that they bring to their work.

Burnout is not far behind - with around half of respondents referencing chronic burnout and exhaustion as a key source of their turnover intentions.      


There are interesting role-based differences at play here as well. For example, chronic burnout and exhaustion was the primary reason why senior leaders and directors were considering leaving both the sector (59%) or their organization (57%) - highlighting the significant burdens that senior women in this sector bear on a daily basis.

On the other hand, compensation was the primary reason why front line staff and supervisors were considering leaving both the sector (70%) or their organizations (100%) - highlighting the financial precarity that exists in the sector among women in less senior roles.

At it's core, however, the trend is the same:

Women in the Canadian nonprofit sector are underpaid and burnt out, and it is not only impacting their experience in the sector, it's driving them out of the sector entirely.

And that turnover comes at a significant cost.

In our last Workplace Well-Being Report, pay was the primary driver of turnover in a sample of almost 13,000 Canadian nonprofit employees across the full gender spectrum. That report focused on burnout and appreciation as two critical areas that nonprofits can control in under-funded environments, saying:

"We know there is only so much a nonprofit can do to address compensation in a significant way - that is why we often tell nonprofit leaders that if you can't match the compensation demands of your employees, you need to be providing a fantastic experience in the other areas of your culture. They need to feel as though they are receiving an experience that they wouldn't be able to receive elsewhere."

We still believe that to be true.

When compensation gaps exist, organizations need to fill that gap in other ways. Their employees need to feel like they are valued, like they are developing, and like they are getting the type of employee experience that gives them a genuine reason to stay - otherwise, why would they?

But, let's have the hard conversation. Let's talk compensation.

The Cost of the Compensation Problem

This is where we often see leaders' shoulders drop. Let's be clear: We've never met a nonprofit leader who wants to pay their people less. They know their pay is too low, but they are funded by project grants, thin margins, and donor restrictions, and compensation is the one line they feel they cannot touch in a meaningful way. Those are real constraints - pretending otherwise would simply be inaccurate.

So instead of arguing whether the sector can afford to pay its people more, let's look instead at what it is already paying not to.

Let's start with the size of the workforce. Canada's community nonprofit sector - the charities and community organizations that serve people directly (setting aside the hospitals, schools, universities, and colleges that tend to pay in different bands) - employs about 625,000 people across the country. Using Imagine Canada and Statistics Canada data, about 69% of them are women and female-identifying. That is roughly 430,000 women holding Canada's community nonprofit sector together.

Now let's talk retention. More than one in three women (35%) in our survey told us they are at risk of leaving - either questioning their future in the sector or questioning their role in their current organization - with compensation being the primary reason why women are considering leaving. Now, we know intention is not the same as action and we know not everyone will follow through on that. But if even half of them do, that is roughly 75,000 women leaving Canadian nonprofits in a single year - just shy of the capacity of the MetLife Stadium that held the 2026 World Cup final (click here to see just how many people that really is).


Now put a number on losing even one of them. Gallup puts the cost of replacing an employee at 40% to 200% of their annual salary once you consider the full costs of turnover: recruiting costs, onboarding, the productivity lost while the role sits empty, the months before a new hire is fully effective, and the institutional knowledge that needs to be replaced. Gallup breaks this out by role, with turnover of more seasoned and specialized employees carrying higher costs - 40% for frontline staff, 80% for professional and technical roles, and up to 200% for leadership. Because community nonprofits tend to be front-line heavy, we will anchor on the low end: 40% of salary as our conservative floor and 80% as our upper estimate. At an average community nonprofit salary of $43,020, that means each departure costs the sector somewhere between $17,000 and $34,000.

Even the most conservative estimates of this turnover clear a billion dollars every year - and that does not even account for the turnover of leaders.

The visualization below scales the annual replacement bill across a range of turnover rates using Gallup's frontline (40%) and professional (80%) rates.

    • 17.5% of nonprofit women - half of the "at risk" group would see ~75,000 women leaving their organizations in the next year at an estimated cost of $1.3B to $2.6B to the sector.

    • 26% of nonprofit women - 75% of the "at risk" group would see ~112,000 women leaving their organizations at an estimated cost of $1.9B to $3.9B.

    • 35% of nonprofit women - the full "at risk" group would see ~151,000 women leaving their organizations at an estimated cost of $2.6B to $5.2B.

 

Here is the point we want to land the most. These numbers don't show up on balance sheets, but this money is not hypothetical. It is not money the sector might have to find - it is money the sector is already spending. Over a billion dollars quietly paid out in job postings, empty desks, and the slow re-learning of everything the last person knew. That money buys nothing. No new programs, no one new served - it just refills the same roles, again and again, because they keep emptying due to the same old compensation and burnout challenges across the sector.

So the choice has never been whether to "pay people more" or "spend nothing". The sector is already paying, at scale, for the consequences of underpaying its people. The real question is whether that money keeps being spent to replace the women who leave - or to actually keep them. We are not claiming a raise is free or easy - we know that it's not. But we are saying that the status quo already has a price tag in the billions, and it's important to remember that the sector is already covering that cost, one resignation at a time.

Where Can You Start?

Communities across Canada depend on nonprofits. Nonprofits across Canada depend on women. And yet, despite being the dominant group in the sector, women continue to report a heavier and more strained employee experience than men - and they deserve more support. 

So where can you start?

Most of the challenges we highlighted in this report - compensation, burnout, recognition, trust - are not things that any individual can fix on her own. And the actions that will have the biggest impact are rarely hers to take. That is why this section focuses primarily on actions for the two groups who can affect change the most: Nonprofit executives, and boards/funders. 

Actions For Nonprofit Executives

Your board and funders might dictate some big decisions, but it is you who dictates workload, builds culture, and sets priorities. If you are a nonprofit executive, this is where our data says you should focus your attention.

Either resource the mission, or resize it

The top stressor in our data was telling: Respondents felt too under-resourced to achieve their mission. What makes that so distinctive is the context: It's not just "I have too much to do", it's "I cannot do the thing I came here to do".

That distinction matters, because it explains why strong mission alignment does not protect the women in our sector, and can actually do the opposite. People who care about their work will absorb the gap between what is needed and what is funded, and they absorb it with their energy.

If we want to protect well-being in our sector, we need to either resource the mission or resize it. Those resources aren't only monetary - they can be staffing, time, tools, training, or additional expertise. If you can't resource it appropriately, you need to resize it accordingly. And before adding a program, a partnership, or a funder deliverable, you should name what comes off the list if resources are not expanding. That is the question you need to ask when new work is being approved, not six months later when something breaks.

 

Put a number on the pay gap - and commit to closing it

Compensation was the clearest theme across this entire report. It was the single largest driver of turnover in our data, and the most significant driver of financial precarity across women in the sector.

This isn't just a story about nonprofit salaries being low across the board: the gap is gendered, with women across the sector tending to earn less than men doing the same work.

You may not be able to close that gap overnight, but you can measure it. Commit to a pay equity review comparing pay by gender within the same role, level, and tenure, and be honest about what you find. If a full correction isn't possible right now, commit publicly to a timeline, and use the “resource it or resize it” principle above to find room before taking on new commitments. Closing what you can measure is a meaningfully different action than accepting the gap as sector reality.

Invest in the "squeezed middle"

The largest well-being gaps we see in our data sit with the supervisors and managers - that "squeezed middle" who absorb both frontline strain and leadership pressures. Their well-being matters, and it's often these women carrying the largest burdens in Canadian nonprofits.

But there's a second reason to invest here: poor leadership and not feeling supported by a leader were major forces behind turnover in the sector. When you put those two pieces together, it's the managers with the worst well-being scores whose capacity determines whether everyone below them stays.

The response is not asking exhausted leaders to manage better, it's to resource them so they can support their teams. Things like:

    • Funding coaching and development for this layer specifically
    • Protect their time so they can lead, not just put out day-to-day fires
    • Match authority to accountability so managers are only held responsible for outcomes they have the power to change

This is the layer that your future senior leaders should come from. Losing them is a succession problem you will feel in five years - invest in them.

 

Collect your own data to understand your own unique needs

Your organization has your own, unique needs and sector averages are easy to read as someone else's problem. That's why it's important to collect your own data to understand the picture within your own organization and the only way to do that is by looking at your own data, broken out by gender, and by other critical dimensions like race, disability, or 2SLGBTQIA+ identity where you're able to collect it responsibly. If you do not collect demographic data with your employee survey, now is a good time to start.

And remember to look deeper than engagement. Our data demonstrates how often men and women report almost identical engagement scores, but it's in other areas like well-being, trust, and recognition that the real challenges often live.

Match your benefits and policies to actual lived realities

Two of the strongest predictors of burnout and financial precarity among women in our data existed not in the workplace, but at home: having caregiving responsibilities and living on a single income.

Here's question: Do your benefits account for those types of lived realities? When you consider the policies across your organization, would you say these employees feel supported or left out?

Here are some places to start:

  • Build caregiving policies for open-ended, unscheduled adult care, not just parental leave. The best policies include flexible scheduling, predictable hours, and workload adjustments during high-care periods.
  • Stress-test your wage floor against a single-earner household in your region. How would one income in your organization fare?
  • Check your benefits. Many health and dental plans are designed on the quiet assumption that a partner's plan will coordinate coverage. For the roughly 1 in 3 without a partner at home, single coverage is all they have.
  • Write down your policies and apply them consistently. Case-by-case flexibility looks supportive, but reads as favouritism.
  • Actively counter the motherhood penalty - a pattern where women are excluded from hiring or advancement because employers assume caregiving reduces commitment, capacity, or ambition.

Create a culture of appreciation

Feeling appreciated is one of the most important predictors of our mental health at work, and our data demonstrates that women consistently score lower than men on appreciation and recognition.

This gap matters. Appreciation is one of the simplest and fastest ways to improve trust and help women feel seen, particularly in roles where emotional labour is high and resources are thin.

This is especially true in client-facing and care-giving roles. Our data shows that 76% of women said their interactions with the people they serve affect their personal well-being at work, compared to 62% of men – a clear, measurable emotional labour gap. Naming that load explicitly, rather than treating it as an invisible cost of “caring work,” is itself a form of appreciation.

Our team at YMCA WorkWell distinguishes recognition and appreciation like this: recognition focuses on what the employee has done, while appreciation focuses on who the employee is. To truly build a culture where employees feel adequately valued, leaders need to be mindful of both.

To do this most effectively, consider that employees want to both:

    • Fit in: Things like treating them fairly, including them in the informal moments as well as the formal ones, naming shared values explicitly and often, and including them in decision-making processes.
    • Stand Out: Providing specific, individualized recognition, giving them opportunities to showcase their unique strengths, and creating visible ownership of meaningful work.

Given the time and resource constraints required to meaningfully restructure workload and compensation, our data suggests that this is one area that leaders can start today to make a meaningful impact on well-being.

 

Advocate, advocate, advocate

Sustainable change requires sector-level initiatives, not just organizational-level initiatives - and that's where your voice matters.

Use data like this to make the case to your funders, to your board, to your government partners, and to your community that the women who power this sector deserve to be paid and supported like it.

Your voice as a leader in your community matters, and the narrative will only change in a meaningful way if enough of us refuse to accept that this is "just the nonprofit way".

Actions for Funders & Board Members

You often dictate whether the funds exist to tackle this work and what it can be used for. Nonprofit leaders work inside the envelope you set, and that's why you can play such a critical role in women's well-being within our sector. If that is something you care about, and we hope it is, this is what our data says you should prioritize:

Fund compensation head on, not just around it

Compensation was the single biggest reason women in our data were leaving the sector and their organizations. It's impact is undeniable.

Funders shape that reality more than almost anyone else in this chain. When a grant restricts what share of a budget can go to salaries, or rewards a low overhead ratio as a mark of “efficiency”, you are setting a ceiling on what your grantees can pay the people doing the work. And our data suggests that ceiling falls hardest on the women doing the work.

If you want to see compensation actually improve at the organizations you fund, start with your own practices. Treat competitive, livable wages as a legitimate program cost, not overhead to be minimized. Favour multi-year, flexible funding that gives room for cost-of-living increases, rather than funding a single snapshot in time. And when you evaluate a grantee's “efficiency”, weigh it against whether their staff can actually afford to stay, not just against how little they spend on themselves.

Fund/support the layer that nobody funds/supports

Grant budgets typically fund either side of an organizational hierarchy - going towards either frontline delivery or executive-level development. It's less common to see funding support the leaders in between, which is exactly where our data says the greatest strain exists.

Poor leadership was one of the most common reasons why women were leaving the sector and their organizations, and that's why supporting the capacity of the "squeezed middle" - the critical supervisory and managerial layer in nonprofits - is a such an important intervention for retention.

Instead of directing all of your funding and attention on frontline delivery and executive supports, be mindful to focus on that manager layer specifically, and it will have a significant impact on the well-being of the nonprofits you support.

Don't forget the benchmarks that matter

Sector salary benchmarks are a valuable tool in the sector - for example, CharityVillage recently released a great example outlining salary and benefit benchmarks across Canadian nonprofits.

While it's valuable to compare organizations to sector benchmarks, it's also important to compare to other benchmarks, like whether a salary is livable. Even executives are not immune to this, with a third of the senior leaders in our survey reporting financial instability.

There are many examples of this across the sector, where boards and funders often focus on comparing nonprofits across sector benchmarks - but be mindful to also ask where societal benchmarks should be considered as well.

Four questions for board members

Board members have more of an impact on women's well-being than they may think. Here are some questions for boards to consider if they are looking to genuinely support women in the nonprofit sector:

  1. How does our nonprofit's employee experience differ by gender? And if we can't answer that question, why can't we?
  2. What supports do our manager and supervisor layers require that our front line and executive team do not? How can we better support those needs?
  3. Does our caregiving policy work for someone caring for an aging parent, or only someone with a new baby?
  4. Do our benefits work for employees with no second plan to coordinate with? Or do they rely on that second plan in a household?
Four questions for funders

Here are some questions worth asking about your own funding practices if you want to support women in the nonprofit sector:

  1. Does our funding structure allow the organizations we support to pay a competitive, livable wage - or does our overhead policy quietly set a ceiling on it?
  2. Do we ask grantees about staff well-being with the same rigour we ask about program outcomes? And if we don't collect that data, why not?
  3. Are our grant terms - single-year, fully restricted, no funding for indirect costs - making it harder for the “squeezed middle” to get the support they need?
  4. When we reward an organization for being “efficient,” are we confident we're not just rewarding the ones asking their staff to absorb the gap?

Actions for Women Working in the Sector

The challenges identified in this report are systemic and they require top-down change to be sustainably addressed. That's why this section has focused on executives, funders, and board members. It's worth remembering, however, that the majority of the women in the sector do not fit into those buckets. If you are a woman working in the sector, here are some actions you can take that will make a difference too:

Recognize the women around you

Recognition is one of the strongest predictors of a healthy employee experience, and this report highlighted how women are less likely than men to feel adequately recognized at work.

We often view recognition as top-down, coming from a leader. But some of the most powerful recognition is peer-based and bottom-up.

Here is an easy place to start: make it a habit to shout out your teammates when they do something great. And if you want to make the biggest impact, be sure to "explain your why". In other words, clearly explain why their unique contributions meant so much to you and the team - that is where the magic is.

And along the way, don't forget to recognize your leader. Women supervisors and managers were some of the most under-appreciated people in our data, and they deserve to hear it too.

 

Find your community

Isolation amplifies every single challenge in this report. There is always strength in numbers - and finding your people is a great way to ensure that a lack of connection isn't one of the challenges you face in the sector.

The Women's Nonprofit Network is a great example of the amazing communities that exist for women across Canada. It is a community of 8,000 women from across the Canadian nonprofit sector who are changing the narrative on what it means to be a woman in the sector, putting leadership, connection, and well-being first.

Model the way yourself

One clear theme in the comments we received was that women deeply appreciate seeing balance modelled in the workplace.

If you lead a team, this is a great opportunity for you to actively model what healthy work looks like. Take time off for child care, take your parent to the appointment, take a well-being day - and be sure to openly communicate it to your team instead of hiding it. It's important for people to see the choices you're making to support your own well-being.

The more people we see taking the necessary steps towards healthy work, the easier it is to feel like we can take those steps too.

 

Stay in it With Us

This report is one just step toward understanding women's experiences in Canada's nonprofit sector. There is considerably more to do and it's our actions now that matter most. Here are some ways to stay in it with us:

    1. Share the findings. Real change starts with advocacy - and that means talking openly about the challenges that women face in the sector. We have created a collection of graphics and key findings to help bring these findings into your own organizations and your own networks. Click here to learn more and see the assets.

    2. Mark Women in Nonprofit Awareness Day (WNAD) in your calendar on October 21. WNAD is a national initiative created by the Women's Nonprofit Network and held annually on October 21 to recognize the women who strengthen the sector through their leadership, expertise and impact. Stories, reflections, and recognition shared as part of this initiative will use the hashtags #WomenInNonprofitAwarenessDay and tag @womensnonprofitnetwork to help connect important conversations across the sector.
    3. Join the Women's Nonprofit Network. Join 8,000 women from across the Canadian nonprofit sector who care about leadership, connection, well-being, and changing the narrative.
    4. Measure your own teams. 38% of respondents to our community survey reported burnout "often" or "extremely often" compared to 24% among our YMCA WorkWell partners. The difference between 38% and 24% often starts with collecting the right data. If you want to know where your organization sits, our Insights Survey is designed specifically for nonprofiits and we are always happy to support teams looking to build healthier cultures. 
    5. Subscribe for more updates and stories. This report is just one step towards building a healthier experience for women within Canada's nonprofit sector. Both of our teams will continue exploring these issues and publishing new reports and resources. If you'd like to follow along you can subscribe to both the YMCA WorkWell email list and the Women's Nonprofit Network email list at these links.

It takes a village to create genuine, sector-level change. We don't just need a handful of organizations to take this seriously, we need the sector to take it seriously. So let's fight for it, together.

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