Research Guides: Business Research Toolkit: Non-Profits and Charities

Non-Profit Tax Form

Nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status are required to file Form 990, Return of Organizations Exempt from Income Tax, with the IRS as a condition of granting tax-free status. The form includes financial statements and background information on the nonprofit, including salaries of key employees (i.e. director, head, officers). Nonprofits are required to give a copy of their latest filing to anyone who asks. All 990 Form information is available from the nonprofit or the IRS. Most are available on the Web. To learn more about nonprofit tax filing visit the IRS site for Charities and Nonprofits.

Understanding IRS Form 990

Mining the 990: A Guide to Gleaning Key Data From Charities’ Tax Forms
The Chronicle of Philanthropy guide to finding information contained in nonprofits’ Form 990 tax filings.

Finding Nonprofit Profiles and Financial Data

Nonprofit Profiles
Nonprofit Tax and Financial Data

Charity Navigator
Evaluates charities in the United States.
Idealist
A Directory of over 77,000 nonprofits and volunteer organizations worldwide.
BBB Charity Reports Index
Profiles of charities/nonprofits, including financials and contact information.

CitizenAudit.Org
This website currently the only freely available full-text searchable database of full digitized nonprofit financials, with PDFs of the 990 forms back to about 2002.
GuideStar
GuideStar's mission is to promote philanthropy by helping donors, institutional funders, and charities become more informed, effective, and efficient. Site contains GuideStar's searchable database of more than 700,000 U.S. nonprofit organizations, donor resources, news and information.
Foundation Center: 990 Finder
Quick look-up tool for finding 990 forms.
Foundation Center: Stats
The Foundation Center's Foundation Stats provides the most comprehensive resource available for generating tables and charts on the size, scope, and giving priorities of the U.S. foundation community.
The National Center for Charitable Statistics
The National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) is the national repository of data on the nonprofit sector in the United States. Its mission is to develop and disseminate high quality data on nonprofit organizations and their activities for use in research on the relationships between the nonprofit sector, government, the commercial sector, and the broader civil society. The site provides access to information derived primarily from data supplied by tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.
ProPublica: Nonprofit Explorer
From the independent, nonprofit newsroom ProPublica, use this database to view summaries of tax returns from tax-exempt organizations and financial details such as executive compensation, revenue, and expenses. Browse IRS data released since 2013 and access more than 9.6 million tax filing documents going back as far as 2001.