Fair pay is a justice issue.
The people who carry the nonprofit sector are too often underpaid because good compensation data was expensive, stale, or simply out of reach. waterline exists to change that, putting real-time, hyper-local pay benchmarks in the hands of every mission-driven organization.
What we believe
Compensation is where a nonprofit's values meet its budget. When pay lags the market, organizations lose the people they depend on, and the gap falls hardest on the roles already closest to the communities they serve.
We believe every organization, not just the ones who can afford a consultant, deserves to know where its pay stands. So we built waterline to be self-serve, affordable, and grounded in data that reflects your actual peers, in your actual metro, right now.
Born from a survey, built for the whole sector
waterline began inside Studio Watershed, a Chicago social-impact studio, where our team ran an annual nonprofit compensation survey that local leaders came to rely on for setting fair, defensible pay.
That survey proved something simple: nonprofits will share honest data when it comes back to them as something useful. waterline takes that idea live, turning a once-a-year PDF into a self-serve platform that any organization can use, in any metro, with data that updates continuously instead of aging on a shelf.
waterline is now its own company. Studio Watershed remains a partner and champion of the work.
The people behind waterline
Amy Kaufman
Amy brings over twenty years in the social sector, where financial acumen and a passion for social change converge to drive lasting impact. Her specialty is blending strategy, scalability, finance, and data to move mission-driven work forward, from national funders like the MacArthur and Gates Foundations to Chicago organizations including Chicago Cubs Charities and A Better Chicago. At waterline, she leads strategy, partnerships, and finance. Amy holds a BS in Public Affairs from Indiana University and an MPA from the University of Illinois, and was a 2018 RSF Integrated Capital Fellow.
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Bryn Murray
Bryn brings over two decades of experience working in and with the nonprofit sector. Her specialty is turning data into products that work: productionizing machine learning models, building analytics infrastructure, and helping teams make better decisions with data. At waterline, she leads engineering, analytics, and the data pipeline that powers the product's intelligence. Bryn holds an MPP from the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy.
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