Operations Director salary & cost by state
The operations (or business) director keeps the church running underneath the ministry — finances, facilities, HR, and systems. Because the role maps closely to a nonprofit operations manager, its compensation follows both the local market and the complexity of what it oversees, and it becomes one of the most valuable hires a growing church makes.
At a national baseline (mid-size church), an operations director costs a church about $76,754/year before benefits. Pick your state for a real, cost-of-living-adjusted estimate — and the exact figure in the calculator.
Estimates are a start. See your actual cost.
Plug in your operations director's salary, housing, and benefits and get the exact fully-loaded cost — clergy or staff — then plan your whole team.
Choose a state (est. cost to a mid-size church)
Other church roles
Salary figures represent estimated cash salary, before employer payroll tax, benefits (retirement, insurance), and any housing allowance.
Benchmarks built on 2024–2025 source data (BEA 2024, BLS May 2025).
How these numbers are built: a national church-comp base for the role, scaled by church size and adjusted for state cost of living, then run through the same fully-loaded cost model our calculator uses. Sources: BEA Regional Price Parities (state cost of living, 2024); BLS Occupational Employment & Wage Statistics (May 2025); Lifeway Research / GuideStone SBC Church Compensation Study (biennial, free). Figures are planning estimates, not a guarantee — your church's real numbers depend on experience, scope, and benefits.