Have Fun Searching Nonprofit Tax Records
June 21, 2019
If you work at a nonprofit organization, the word free is magical! Databases are also a magical source of information and the life blood for anyone writing grants. A free, authoritative database is like a magic wand. ProPublica is a news source focused on nonprofits and it recently published the story about a free way to search IRS records: “You Can Now Search The Full Text Of 3 Million Nonprofit Tax Records For Free.”
Along with being a newsroom ProPublica also launched a brand new tool: the Nonprofit Explorer database that searches the full text of three million digitally filed IRS nonprofit tax filings. Nonprofit Explorer contains tax records from more than 1.8 million nonprofits as well as names for key employees and organization directors. Users can search for terms anywhere in the tax records. The only catch is the that the nonprofits needed to file their taxes digitally, but nearly two-thirds do so.
How can you use the Nonprofit Explorer:
“For one, this feature lets you find organizations that gave grants to other nonprofits. Any nonprofit that gives grants to another must list those grants on its tax forms — meaning that you can research a nonprofit’s funding by using our search. A search for “ProPublica,” for example, will bring up dozens of foundations that have given us grants to fund our reporting (as well as a few filings that reference Nonprofit Explorer itself).
Just another example: When private foundations have investments or ownership interest in for-profit companies, they have to list those on their tax filings as well. If you want to research which foundations have investments in a company like ExxonMobil, for example, you can simply search for the company name and check which organizations list it as an investment.”
Usually a database like this requires a yearly subscription. Most nonprofits cannot afford subscription fees, so ProPublica is providing a public service that will assist millions. ProPublica probably uses their own database to apply for grants to fund it.
Keep in mind that some bad actors set up non profit organizations for some interesting purposes. Access to these records may provide useful to some investigators.
Whitney Grace, June 21, 2019
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