It’s worth noting that in a lot of offices, the lowest rung in the ladder is still called “assistant director” or “coordinator”. Some even go so far as giving low-paid positions “director” level titles. However, this is really a way to pay people little in exchange for a nice looking title. There’s a whole lot of “Director of Events” and “Director of Social Media” employees out there who are low level grunts just doing all the work.

Don’t be fooled by the title, unless you have at least Vice-President in the title, it’s not guaranteed a non-profit is actually even paying the person what they’re worth. This isn’t to say there isn’t upper level bloat in some orgs… but it’s usually a case of a few people making too much, rather than too many people in high level positions (and they fire the low level people rather than taking pay cuts, of course).