Endowment and Foundation Investment Staff Compensation Survey
Access targeted compensation data for your investment professionals supporting endowments and foundations.
Workforce Intelligence That’s Unique
in the Marketplace
The world of philanthropy is thriving. As your foundation or endowment identifies new giving opportunities, it’s important to develop innovative programs and services to support them. This requires a highly specialized workforce with unique compensation and pay programs. Elevate your talent management and investment strategies with greater insight into base salary, total cash compensation, incentive plan design and more! This survey serves as an important resource for organizations looking to benchmark key investment staff positions, including chief investment officer, managing director, director, manager, analysts and operations staff.
Survey Highlights
Base salary, total cash compensation and incentive pay
Detailed incentive plan design information, including incentive target, maximum and actual payouts.
Other data including experience and organizational asset allocation and details on incentive plan design practices, performance measures and expectations, award payouts and timing, new hire bonuses and investment returns.
National data reported by organization type and asset category.
Key investment staff positions, including chief investment officer, managing director, director, manager, two levels of analyst staff and three levels of investment operations staff.
Key Details
Download a sample of the 2025 survey report.
Your time is valuable, which is why we’ve designed our survey systems to minimize your effort and provide an easy and flexible experience.
Data collected through our secure, online data collection.
Submit data once and qualify for all applicable surveys.
Prepopulated prior-year data whenever possible.
Submit compensation data through an Excel file upload.
Delegate survey tasks across your organization to other colleagues.
Enhanced multiphase auditing process helps to ensure data integrity and accuracy.
Dedicated participant support team and subject matter experts on hand to assist with any questions.
Dedicated participant support team and subject matter experts to assist with any questions.
Exclusive participant pricing and bundles as well as early submission discounts.
Early access to benchmarks and pay practices reports.
Input on preferred topics for future surveys.
Access to pulse survey results covering hot topics.
Complimentary access to pay practices reports when submitting to those survey sections.
The compensation benchmarks and pay practices report are delivered via SullivanCotter’s web-based Benchmarks360™ product suite – providing users with self-serve analytics dashboards for their unique reporting needs.
Order the Survey Report
Key Dates:
Opens: January 6, 2026
Early Submission: January 30, 2026
Closes: February 20, 2026
Publication: May 2026
Current Status: Closed
2026 Pricing:
Participants: $1,700
Nonparticipants: $6,800
Early Submission Discount: $300 off Participant Price.
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Frequently Asked Questions
Let us help you find the information you need to determine if this is the SullivanCotter survey that’s right for you.
More details regarding submission and publication dates can be found here.
More details regarding pricing options can be found here. Non-health care nonparticipants will need to call 888.739.7039 for pricing information. Participants can receive $300 off the participant price by submitting their organization’s data by the early submission deadline
The survey report includes benchmarks, electronic data table results and a pay practices report.
Pay practices reports are complimentary to organizations who have answered all questions labeled as required in the corresponding survey sections.
Our benchmarks, electronic data table results and pay practices reports are delivered via our web-based Benchmarks360™ product suite.
Let’s Architect Your Solution
Ready to combine access to industry-leading data with comprehensive support to drive workforce and
organizational performance? Contact SullivanCotter to get started.
