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Nonprofit data

NICAR 2024

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Todd Wallack

Investigative/Data Reporter, WBUR

todd.wallack@bu.edu / @twallack

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bit.ly/nicar24-nonprofits

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What are nonprofits?

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Different IRS classifications

  • 501(c)3 – charities
  • 501(c)4 - advocacy groups
  • 501(c)6 - business associations
  • 501(c)5 – labor unions

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How many in US?

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Roughly 2 million organizations

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9.2% of US wages

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5.3% of US GDP

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Source: Guidestar, NCCS

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IRS Form 990�

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990PF

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990 EZ

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990-N

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Volume of filings

https://www.irs.gov/statistics/soi-tax-stats-irs-data-book

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Who doesn’t file

  • Churches
  • Federally charted credit unions
  • Certain political committees (which often file other disclosures instead)

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Statistics

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Raw data

https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/tax-exempt-organization-search-bulk-data-downloads

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Charities

List of charities

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Lost tax exempt status

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Business Master File Extract (EO BMF)

bit.ly/nicar-irs

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Join biz master file to extract data

Example in R

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Raw 990 data

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PDF or XML

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Format: XML

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Key data in tags

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Examples of code to parse XML

https://github.com/jsfenfen/990-xml-reader

https://github.com/TWALLACK/IRS/

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Propublica nonprofit explorer

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Nonprofit data

NICAR24

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Todd Wallack

Investigative/Data Reporter, WBUR

todd.wallack@bu.edu / @twallack

​

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bit.ly/nicar24-nonprofits

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