Research Guides @ Fordham: Nonprofit and Non-Governmental (NGO) Organizations: Researching Nonprofits in the U.S.

Nonprofit Types

This guide covers tools for researching (3) types of nonprofit or tax-exempt organizations:

501(c)(3) charitable, educational, or religious organizations
501(c)(4) social welfare organizations and associations
527 political organizations

► See explanations of organization types from Open Secrets.

► See the IRS website for additional tax-exempt organization types.

U.S. Nonprofit Organizations

GuideStar
Sign up for a free GuideStar account providing basic information about registered nonprofit organizations.
Charity Navigator
The largest evaluator of public charities offering a numbers-based rating system to assess over 9,000 American nonprofit organizations.
Tax Exempt Organization Search - Internal Revenue Service (IRS)
Helps researchers find information about a tax-exempt organization’s federal tax status and filings.
Nonprofit Explorer from ProPublica
Search through millions of annual returns filed by tax-exempt organizations.
Give.org - BBB Wise Giving Alliance
Reports from the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance.

527 Organizations

527 Explorer from ProPublica
Search through public 527 data organized into a database by ProPublica.

Nonprofit Websites

► To learn more about a nonprofit through its website, navigate the menu to look for the following:

Mission statement, values, and organizational history
Staff & Board of Directors
Publications including annual reports, research reports, white papers, and press releases
Donations from individual donors, foundations, corporations, and government grants

► Not sure how to find the information you want from a nonprofit website?

Search the website with Google Advanced Search tools. See this page for more information.
For content that has been removed, copy the URL and check to see if there is an archived page in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine.

Issues & Program Areas

IssueLab by Candid
Open access search of nonprofit reports.

Policy File Index This link opens in a new window
Online access to public policy research and analysis from think tanks, university research programs, nonprofit organizations and more.

Nonprofit Leaders

Directory information about nonprofits leaders varies depending on the size and influence of an organization. Try the following options to learn about nonprofit leaders:

LinkedIn & other social media
Search by name in Nexis Uni
Search by name in newspaper collections
Search by name or nonprofit name in other library databases to find articles by a specific person or articles about an organization

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