Compensation and Benefits

Compensation philosophy

Aspirational

We are a young organization, and this page describes the salary policy that we aim to enact in the coming years. It may not accurately reflect our current practices, but we share it for transparency and to provide a goal for our team to shoot for.

Note

We are working on an update of our existing compensation policy. More details about the upcoming changes will be updated here as soon we reach consensus and approval for the new policy.

Our salary policy should ensure that our team feels financially supported and respected in their roles, and should be aligned with our values and mission as a non-profit organization. Team members should feel that 2i2c is a competitive workplace from a salary perspective, while recognizing that we do not have the financial resources of most tech companies. Below are a few guiding principles of our salary policy:

• Benchmarked to non-profit tech. We should benchmark our salaries based on similar roles in our sector (non-profits that do technical or research work, depending on the role). See Salary band process with GuideStar for the current process we follow.

  • If we determine that a sector is systemically under-paying a given role in a way that makes us uncompetitive, then we may increase the salary band for the role to be more aligned with the private sector.

• Explicit rationale. All of our salaries must be tied to explicit roles, with consistent and transparent responsibilities and expectations for entering and advancing a role.

• Transparent compensation by role. Our salaries, benefits, and the roles that they are attached to should be available to all.

• Fixed salaries for a role. We do not negotiate salaries within a given role. Salaries are fixed for a given role and tenure[1].

• Equal pay for equal work. We practice equal pay for equal work across our team. Salaries do not distinguish between geographic location or cost of living and are benchmarked against North American salaries in the non-profit tech sector.

Salary band process with GuideStar

We define our salary levels relative to non-profit organizations with a similar size and scope as 2i2c. In order to have a more objective definition of competitive salaries, we use the GuideStar compensation report to compare common numbers across non-profits. This is provided by CS&S, and we have a PDF in our drive here:

• GuideStar Report for non-profits similar to us (2022)

• Full GuideStar report here

Use the following criteria when defining the salary for a given position / level with the GuideStar report:

• Use the Science and Technology Research Institutes, Services category

• Use the $1m-$5m budget category

• Choose an appropriate job category that most closely matches this position.

• Define “compensation” as base salary + 25% benefits.

• Use the median compensation in a category as a starting salary.

• If this is for an earlier job in a given series, adjust the total compensation down accordingly (see below for a guideline).

Understanding the GuideStar reports

Here are a few tips to understand the GuideStar reports:

• The numbers there are for the top-paid position in each category. This means that for earlier levels in a job category, we need to reduce the total compensation accordingly.

  • Rule of thumb: Expect a 10% salary bump between job levels, and a 2% salary bump for steps within a level.

• This is total compensation, not salary. GuideStar reports a combination of salary and benefits, keep this in mind when defining our salary bands.

• Do not share the GuideStar report externally. It is a service paid-for by CS&S and should not be shared out of the CS&S organization. The links above should only be available to those with a @2i2c.org email address.

List of salary bands

To be updated

We are working on updating our salary bands across 2i2c, see this issue for details.

We have internal salary documents for the specific positions and levels.

Benefits and expenses policy

This section describes our benefits and expenses policy across all team members at 2i2c. 2i2c team members include people who are designated as employees and as contractors, depending on their role at 2i2c.

Benefits are available to employees only and are managed through Code for Science and Society’s relationship with a service partner or PEO. For example, employees who are US based and employed through Code for Science and Society’s relationship with Trinet, will have access to health coverage and retirement benefits through Trinet. Employees based outside the US and employed through a relationship with a PEO like Remote will have access to benefits available in their region through that PEO. More details can be found at the the CS&S employee handbook.

Contractors are independent, not employed by CS&S, and are brought on to support 2i2c with their specific expertise. To support these contract relationships, 2i2c estimates a 20% on top of the contractor’s monthly payment is needed to match some types of expenses related to the operation of independent contract business, such as would typically be charged as overhead at a larger organization. These expenses include healthcare, accounting services, etc.

Time off

Our time off policy is documented in our Taking time off section.

Mechanism for reimbursement

For anything that involves purchasing equipment, services, tickets, etc., our reimbursement process is documented in our Reimbursements and Ramp section.

List of additional reimbursable expenses for our 2i2c team members

Equipment

We inherit the Equipment Policy for Code for Science and Society. This defines a budget of $5,000 every 3 years for equipment for each team member. This includes computers, desks, monitors, microphones, etc. The goal is to make sure the team has the technical equipment they need to operate as a distributed team member that largely operates via video chat and text.

Internet

We reimburse up to $100 a month for a high-speed internet subscription.

Travel

We reimburse any work-related travel expenses for its team members. Team members should get approval for travel (and a rough budget) before any booking.

Personal development

Development recommendations and reimbursement are described in our Personal and professional development section

Wellness

We want to help you to maintain a well-rounded and healthy lifestyle. You can be reimbursed up to $600 per calendar year for activities such as:

• memberships (ie. gym membership)

• exercise technology (ie. fitness trackers)

• lessons or personal training (ie. sports, music, art)

• classes (ie. yoga, martial arts)

• personal services (ie. massage, nutrition counseling)

• purifiers and humidifiers (ie. water purifiers, air purifiers)

The list is not exhaustive, so use your best judgment in determining what to submit through wellness reimbursement (and use the above examples as references).

Some additional clarifications

• This is, by design, an incomplete and non-exhaustive list because we are always looking to improve it!

• For the yearly amounts we defined in the above benefits subsections, we do not roll over those between calendar years.

• There is a deadline for these claims for the previous calendar year: March 31st of the current year.

• For team members starting mid way through the calendar year, we prorate the amounts described above.

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[1]

This is because we believe that allowing negotiation introduces bias that benefits individuals who are more confident, aggressive, or experienced. This also correlates heavily with demographics and personal qualities that are not tied to the ability to do the job well. Instead we try to be as transparent as possible for the rationales at a given level. See the Tidelift blog post on their no-negotiation policy for salaries for one rationale for this practice, and this blog post for an argument against negotiation bans.