Staff Bonus Program

As part of our fiduciary responsibility to ensure that the efforts of the NYC region are both fiscally sustainable and Biblically aligned, we on the NYC advisory board have spent substantial time over the last three years thinking and praying about better aligning staff compensation with Biblical values, rather than just adopting prevailing parachurch, non-profit, or secular standards for rewarding our staff’s efforts.

Last year, we substantially increased staff’s base compensation levels in reflection of Jesus’s instruction to the first 72 followers He sent out in Luke 10, and of Paul’s reminder to Timothy in I Timothy 5, “The worker deserves his wages.” Although NYC staff members are still not paid as well as their counterparts elsewhere in the country when adjusted for well-accepted cost-of-living standards, we continue to work to ensure that our workers are justly compensated.

This year, in continuation of our ongoing meditation on the model Christ gave us for just compensation, we have implemented a much more robust performance incentive program for the staff. For full-time staff, the maximum potential payout has been increased from $3,000/year to $15,000/year, while the performance metrics for earning that bonus have become substantially more thorough, more objective, and more quantifiable.

Full-time campus staff will be evaluated in five areas: evangelism, discipleship, student leadership development, fundraising, and their formal review. For each category, we have defined, in partnership with the staff, three levels of performance, nearly all of which are defined in quantifiable, demonstrable terms. Staff will receive one “point” for each level of performance in each category, for a total of 15 possible points. Each point is worth $1000 for a maximum possible bonus of $15,000, which for staff generally earning somewhere in the low-30s, is a substantial reward and incentive for faithful and effective stewardship of their talents.

We are grateful to several “angel capital” donors who have stepped up to underwrite much of this first year’s “bonus pool,” and are looking for several more donors to match their generosity with similar performance-contingent commitments to rewarding staff who deliver results over the coming years.

To our knowledge, this is the first such major bonus program to be implemented in any parachurch organization. Our goal in the NYC area is to be results-oriented implementers and innovators of best-practices from the non-profit and for-profit, secular and parochial worlds for the purpose of influencing campuses and the broader culture to the end of winning souls and mobilizing disciples to Christ. Given the novelty of applying this compensation system more commonly found in the for-profit sector to the world of ministry, we would like to share a bit of the scriptural study that motivated the implementation of this new program.

From Jesus’ descriptions of the Kingdom of God in Matthew 24-25, we learn that while our God is one of mercy, He also will reward and punish us for the way in which we steward the resources He has entrusted to us. In the parable of the talents (Matt 25:14-28), to the servants who doubled their money, initially given two and five talents respectively, the Master said “Well done, good and faithful servant! You have been faithful with a few things; I will put you in charge of many things. Come and share your master's happiness!” But to the one who, though only given one talent to start with, failed to produce more fruit, the Master does not promote him for having held his position for another year, or justify his poor performance because he started out with less than the others. Rather the Master says, “You wicked, lazy servant…. You should have put my money on deposit with the bankers, so that when I returned I would have received it back with interest. Take the talent from him and give it to the one who has the ten talents. For everyone who has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. And throw that worthless servant outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.” Harsh words? Maybe. But they’re straight out of the red letters, and Jesus made his point crystal clear by offering two other parables alongside this one making the same point.

We know from Jesus’ parable of the vineyard in Matthew 20 that faithful workers will be rewarded irrespective of their time of service – people should not get more authority or paid more simply for having done the same job for longer than other people. Although first-year interns and part-time staff have half the potential maximum bonus, and senior regional managers have higher expectations and a higher bonus potential than general campus staff, we have structured the incentive program so within each job category, all staff have the same potential reward irrespective of tenure.

We believe that having now prioritized a fair wage, and implemented a process for better rewarding and increasing the resources allotted to the producers on staff, the next cultural change we need to make in the NYC area is to change the fear of being moved out of an unproductive role. Despite Jesus’ unambiguous instruction in the parable of the talents of “firing” the unproductive servant, firing underperforming staff and moving them out of unproductive roles is extraordinarily difficult in the non-profit world, and perhaps even more-so in ministries.

From a management perspective, Paul whole-heartedly adopts this principle of using “the stick” for underperformers in addition to “the carrot” for outstanding stewardship in giving the church in Thessalonica the rule that, “If a man will not work, he shall not eat” (II Thes 3:10). Jesus defined spiritual fruit – which certainly yield material and frequently measurable results in people’s lives – as the standard by which we will be measured. He made the explicit connection in Matthew 3 that trees that fail to bear fruit should be “cut down and thrown in the fire” (Matt 3:10). And from a worker’s perspective, what good reason can motivate the desire to remain in a role where one is not producing fruit?

Our goal in now moving from fair wages and rewarding good stewardship to looking at how to more effectively to trim “unproductive limbs” on the vine of IVCF NYC is to not to raise the underlying fear of job-security among the staff, but rather to create a culture in which staff members have confidence that we will help them find a place where they will bear fruit, even if they are not producing in their current role. We know from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians that we need and have different gifts in the body of Christ (I Cor 12:14-26). Thus, telling an “eye” that they are not an “ear” and should go find an available eye-socket in which to serve rather than clinging to an unproductive position, is not meanness, but rather loving admonition because each is needed, though in different roles.

Although we have not yet begun fleshing out the practical details of this third part of our meditation on Biblically-aligned compensation, we want to share with you the initial stages of our scriptural study related to this next stage so you can see the process by which we on the NYC board go about applying the guidelines we receive from God in scripture to practical programs designed to produce the work of God in New York City.

We look forward to updating you on the results we anticipate this new incentive program will help produce, and invite your feedback on both the scriptural basis and the practical implementation of our developing staff compensation structure. We fully anticipate modifying it for next year’s iteration in response to feedback from staff, donors, and regional/national management, as well as performance results. Thank you for your partnership in the work of Intervarsity in New York City.

InterVarsity New York City Area Board of Directors
Fall 2006