100 Best Nonprofits to Work for in Oregon

News release
Sept. 30, 2009
Contact for more information:
Robin Doussard, This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.
503-784-5572
www.oregonbusiness.com


Oregon Business magazine has named its first annual 100 Best Nonprofits to Work for in Oregon. The rankings were revealed Tuesday night in a sold-out event at the Portland Art Museum, along with the October issue of the magazine, which spotlights the winners and the nonprofit sector.

More than 6,700 employees at over 200 nonprofits throughout the state participated in the project. Based on the magazine’s widely regard 100 Best Companies project, the nonprofit version was created to recognized a critical business sector that employs hundreds of thousands of workers.

“We realized nonprofits see themselves as very different from other businesses, but we also believed they had one thing very much in common: caring about their employees,” said Oregon Business Editor Robin Doussard. “So we decided to develop a groundbreaking workplace best-practices project — a 100 Best project — just for them. We wanted nonprofits to have the insight into their workforce that the corporate world has so readily come to value over the years.”


The Top 3 Best Small Nonprofits were: No. 1/Oregon Rehabilitation Assoc.; No. 2/Oregon Health Care Assoc.; No. 3/The Dougy Center.

The Top 4 Best Medium Nonprofits were: No. 1/Idealist.org; No. 2/TLC Federal Credit Union; No. 3/Portland YouthBuilders; No. 4/REACH Community Development.

The Top 3 Best Large Nonprofits were: No. 1/Susan G. Komen for the Cure, OR/SW Wash. Affiliate; No. 2/Native American Youth and Family Center; No. 3/Oregon Research Institute.

Any not-for-profit or nonprofit organization with more than 10 Oregon employees was eligible. Those who entered included a wide range of charitable nonprofits that help children, animals, breast cancer victims and many more; business associations; faith-based groups; government entities, and civic organizations.

There was no cost to enter the survey, which was comprised of an anonymous employee survey and an employer benefits survey administered by research partners Davis, Hibbitts and Midghall and Oregon Business research editor, Brandon Sawyer. The nonprofit organization TACS consulted on the creation of the survey questions.

The 6,700 employees who participated in the 100 Best Nonprofits survey ranked satisfaction and importance of 50 workplace qualities in six categories: benefits and compensation; work environment; decision-making and trust; performance management; and career development and learning.

As a whole, employees in the nonprofit survey assigned their highest importance ratings to two workplace variables: “treatment of employees by supervisors,” and “pride and belief in the organization.” The latter item clearly reflects the mission-driven quality of nonprofit organizations and their employees, while the former speaks for itself. Nonprofit employees assessed all workplace characteristics to be of relatively high importance.

For the full list of the 100 Best Nonprofits, go to www.oregonbusiness.com.