Benchmarking ESOs: Understanding Revenue, Expenses, Staffing, and Salaries in FY23

In the rapidly evolving entrepreneurship landscape, one valuable tool an entrepreneur support organization (ESO) can have is a clear understanding of how it compares to its peers. Benchmarking against similar organizations, especially in terms of financial operations, provides essential context raw numbers alone can’t offer. Revenues, expenses, staffing, and funding mix all look different when evaluated alongside organizations serving similar communities or operating at comparable scales. This information empowers ESO leader to make more informed strategic decisions, communicate value to stakeholders, and strengthen long-term sustainability.

InBIA’s FY23 Data Collection: A Deep Dive Into the ESO Landscape

InBIA recently completed a comprehensive data effort, collecting and analyzing FY23 operational and financial data from 97 ESOs across the United States and a handful of global peers. These organizations represent a wide variety of models, including university-affiliated innovation hubs, community-based programs, accelerators, incubators, coworking spaces, and sector-specific support organizations.

Using the submitted data, InBIA examined revenues, expenses, staffing, and executive compensation, offering a rich portrait of the ecosystem-building field today. Whether an ESO aims to assess financial sustainability, benchmark staff size, plan for growth, or compare compensation norms, this dataset provides valuable insights into how these organizations operate.

Revenue Benchmarks: How Much ESOs Earn

Understanding how much revenue ESOs bring in each year helps organizations gauge their financial sustainability, compare their performance with similar organizations, and set goals for growth. This dataset provides a revealing look at both the overall revenue picture and how income levels vary by regional context. 

Overall Annual Revenue

Across all organizations surveyed:

The large gap between mean and median illustrates the financial diversity across the sector: a few high-budget organizations significantly skew the average upward, while most ESOs operate with under $1 million in annual revenue.

Annual Revenue by Region

Location matters. ESOs operate in vastly different economic environments, serve diverse populations, and have access to varied funding sources, all of which shape their revenue profiles. When broken down by region, clear patterns emerge.

Urban ESOs report the highest revenues on average, reflecting larger markets, more extensive programming, and broader funding access. Rural ESOs, conversely, operate on leaner budgets.

Revenue Mix: Where ESOs Get Their Funding

Most ESOs rely on a blend of earned income and grants to fund their operations. InBIA analyzed revenue categories using averages, medians, and weighted averages to provide a fuller picture of how much each funding source contributes within the ESOs that use them, regardless of overall size. 

Top Categories by Average % of Overall Revenue (Among Orgs Reporting Each Source)

This view shows many ESOs rely heavily on facility-based revenue (rent), contracted services, and public grants. 

Top Categories by Median % of Overall Revenue (Among Orgs Reporting Each Source)

While averages are informative, medians tell a different story by reducing the influence of very large or very small organizations, showing what is most common among ESOs that earn money in each category. 

The median view suggests that the typical ESO relies more modestly on grants and service revenue, with events and training representing a small piece of the revenue picture for most organizations. 

Weighted Averages 

Weighted averages evaluate how large organizations contribute to each revenue category by considering the total revenue volume represented, providing a picture of from where the money is actually coming.

This perspective shows the median ESO may not have heavily depended on grants in FY23, but the sector overall was significantly supported by federal funding, followed by rent and state grants. Larger ESOs - often affiliated with universities or statewide programs - leaned strongly on these sources and may have skewed the totals.

How ESOs Spend Money: Expense Patterns Across the Field

While revenue reveals how ESOs bring in resources, expenses show how those resources translate into operations, programming, staffing, and facilities. Together, these figures provide a full picture of organizational sustainability. This analysis highlights important trends in how ESOs structure and manage their budgets, both overall and in different types of locations. 

Overall Annual Expenses

Across all organizations in the dataset, expense levels vary widely from lean, volunteer-driven programs to large, fully staffed innovation hubs. The overall averages tell a story of significant scale differences across the field. 

The gap between the mean and median suggests a skewed distribution, where a subset of large, well-resourced ESOs drive up the average. For many organizations, the median offers a more grounded benchmark of typical operating costs. 

Annual Expenses by Region

When broken out by region, the expense data reveals noticeable differences in cost structure and operational scale. These findings reflect variations in staff size, facilities needs, cost of living, and the funding environment in different geographies. 

Urban ESOs generally spend more, consistent with their higher revenue levels and larger program portfolios. Rural and suburban ESOs operate on smaller budgets, though suburban medians show sizable mid-sized operations.

Expense Distribution: Where the Money Goes

Just as revenue sources vary, so do the ways ESOs allocate their resources. These data reveal clear patterns in how organizations prioritize spending, reflecting the staffing, facility, and programmatic demands of running effective support programs for entrepreneurs. The percentage of total expenses going to each major category provides insight on what it truly takes to sustain an ESO. 

The data show payroll as dominant, accounting for nearly half of all spending for the typical ESO, with a large portion of organizations dedicating majority shares to personnel. Facilities and program costs also represent significant expenses, especially for ESOs operating buildings or hosting major programs. Meanwhile, most ESOs are only investing minimally in training and marketing. 

Staffing Capacity: How Big Are ESO Teams?

The size and structure of an ESO’s team play a major role in determining what kinds of programs it can offer, how many founders it can serve, and how effectively it can execute its mission. These data show significant variation in staffing models across ESOs, from lean teams running highly targeted programs to large, multifaceted organizations serving a larger group. 

Overall Staffing Levels:

This highly skewed distribution reflects the sector’s diversity: many ESOs operate with small, lean teams, while a few large organizations maintain substantial staff capacity.

• 4 organizations report 0 FTE staff, suggesting volunteer-led or highly leveraged staffing models.

FTE Staffing by Region

Staffing levels vary significantly across urban, suburban, and rural communities, reflecting differences in organizational scale, cost structures, and funding landscapes. 

Urban ESOs have the largest average staffing, though the median of 6 shows that the majority remain relatively small. Rural and suburban ESOs operate with equally modest staff sizes.

Executive Salaries: Compensation Across ESOs

Executive compensation is a critical indicator of organizational capacity, leadership stability, and the funding environment in which ESOs operate. These data reveal meaningful differences in compensation across organizations and regions. 

Overall Executive Salary Benchmarks

Executive Salaries by Region

Executive compensation varies by geography, reflecting differences in cost of living, funding availability, organizational size, and regional salary norms. 

As expected, urban ESOs pay the highest salaries on average, while rural and suburban salaries fall in similar ranges. Rural salaries show an interesting pattern with a higher median than mean, suggesting a few very low-salary organizations pull the average down. The modest difference between rural and suburban salaries suggest cost-of-living differences alone don’t fully explain the patterns; organizational size and funding models also play major roles. 

Conclusion: Benchmarking for a Stronger, More Sustainable Field

These FY23 data provide a clear, data-rich picture of how ESOs operate, from revenue sources and expense structures to staffing capacity and executive compensation. These insights offer ESOs invaluable context for understanding their own organizational health and making informed decisions about growth, sustainability, and resource allocation.

Whether operating a small rural program or a large urban innovation hub, ESOs can use these benchmarks to:

• Compare their organizational scale and funding mix

• Advocate for necessary resources

• Adjust staffing and salary structures

• Strengthen long-term sustainability strategies

As the entrepreneurship ecosystem continues to evolve, InBIA will remain committed to gathering, analyzing, and sharing data that empowers ESOs to build stronger programs, better serve founders, and foster resilient, thriving entrepreneurial communities. Keep an eye out for FY25 data collection to begin soon.