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How the nonprofit figures are made

How the pages of the Nonprofits hub read what their publishers put out, and what that record can and cannot say. The method every topic shares — where a figure comes from, snapshots, freshness and corrections — is on the site’s methodology page.

Two files, and what each one is

The Business Master File is the IRS’s list of every organization it recognizes as tax-exempt: name, location, the subsection of the code it was recognized under, the year of that ruling, and a classification code. It records registration, not activity. An organization is in it because its exemption stands, not because it is doing anything.

The Form 990 series is what organizations told the IRS they did: revenue, expenses, assets, and the people they reported paying. We read the IRS’s own bulk filings rather than a second-hand copy, and we use the most recent return on record for each organization. Counts on this site come from the first file; money comes from the second, and the two are never mixed.

What a Form 990 is, and is not

It is an annual information return, filed by the organization about itself. The IRS publishes it as filed. Nothing on it has been audited by the IRS before publication, and organizations amend their returns: where an organization filed twice for one period we use the amendment, which means our figure can disagree with a source still holding the original.

Three forms sit in the series and they are not comparable line for line. A full 990 is for larger organizations; a 990-EZ is a shorter form; a 990-PF is for private foundations and asks different questions. Smaller organizations file a Form 990-N postcard carrying no financial detail at all, and about half the Business Master File is in that category, so most recognized organizations have no financial figures here.

Why filings lag one to two years

A return is due four and a half months after the organization’s fiscal year ends, extensions are routine, and the IRS then takes months to process and publish it. The practical result is that the most recent filing on record usually describes a year that ended one to two years ago, and it is rarely the same year for two organizations. Every figure on this site carries the tax year it describes for that reason.

We take the tax year from the filing itself rather than from the date its period ended. An organization whose year runs to 30 June 2025 filed for tax year 2024, and treating that as 2025 would misdate most filers — more than four in five of them do not use the calendar year.

What “revenue” means here

Total revenue on a Form 990 is not a company’s sales. It includes contributions and grants received, program service revenue, investment income, and gains. A grantmaking foundation and a hospital system can report similar revenue while doing entirely different things, so a ranking by revenue is a ranking by money passing through, not by size or importance.

Assets are reported at book value — what the organization paid for something, not what it is worth now. A private foundation also reports fair market value, which is usually the larger figure, and we show both on its page. Rankings use book value, because it is the only measure all three forms report and therefore the only one that keeps a foundation comparable with the public charity beside it.

Compensation is as the organization reported it

Where we name a person and an amount, both come from the organization’s own return. The amount is reportable compensation from the organization, plus from related organizations, plus other compensation, as the organization reported all three. It is not a verified salary, not take-home pay, and not necessarily for a full year.

The table it comes from is not a list of officers. It carries officers, directors and trustees, key employees, the highest-paid employees, and people who have already left, each marked separately — so we publish which of those the organization ticked alongside the figure. Where an organization reported paying nobody, which is most of them, we name nobody: picking a name off a list where every amount is zero would say something about a private individual that the filing does not.

Who is missing

The IRS states plainly what its own file leaves out: self-declared organizations, split-interest trusts, and churches and other organizations that are not required under the Code to file an application and that have not filed an application for recognition of exemption. Churches need not apply to be exempt, so the churches here are the ones that chose to apply, and this is not a count of churches in the United States.

Nothing in the file is revoked, either. An organization whose exemption is withdrawn leaves it entirely, for a separate list the IRS publishes. So a page here reports what the file contained on the date we retrieved it, and an organization disappearing between refreshes is information rather than a fault.

Roughly three in ten organizations carry no classification code at all, concentrated among older registrations and non-charitable subsections, so category pages describe the organizations that have a code rather than the whole file. A code is also assigned once, at registration, and rarely updated: it describes what an organization said it would do, which may not be what it does now.

What this data cannot show

  • Form 990 data is self-reported by the filer and is not audited by the IRS before publication.
  • Filings lag the fiscal year they describe, often by more than a year.
  • The Business Master File records registration status, not whether an organization is active.

Sources

Data retrieved