Using Nonprofit Tax Returns (IRS Form 990), Charity Databases and Foundation Directories for Fundraising, Grant and Nonprofit Vendor Prospecting
By Email ExtractorPublished 6 min read
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Nonprofit Tax Data as Business Intelligence
There are 1.8M+ tax-exempt organisations in the US, with 350,000+ filing Form 990 annually. Form 990 is a public document that contains detailed financial and operational data:
Data field
What it tells you
Prospecting value
Total revenue
Organisation size and financial capacity
Budget for vendor services, consultant fees, technology
Programme service revenue
Earned revenue from services (tuition, tickets, fees)
Organisations with business-like operations
Contributions and grants received
Fundraising success; donor dependency
Fundraising consultant and technology prospects
Total expenses
Spending capacity; budget allocation
Total addressable market by expense category
Compensation of officers
Executive pay levels; budget for leadership
Executive search and HR consulting prospects
Number of employees
Staffing level; HR needs
HR technology, benefits, payroll prospects
Number of volunteers
Volunteer programme size
Volunteer management technology prospects
Fundraising expenses
Investment in fundraising infrastructure
Fundraising technology and consultant prospects
Programme descriptions
Mission areas; service types
Industry-specific vendor matching
Board members and officers
Leadership contacts; governance
Decision maker identification
Related organisations
Affiliated entities; networks
Multi-entity sales opportunities
Grants paid (private foundations)
Foundation giving; programme areas funded
Grant seeker prospect identification
Who benefits from nonprofit tax data
Company type
What they look for
Best 990 data to use
Fundraising consultant
Nonprofits investing in or struggling with fundraising
Fundraising revenue vs expenses; growth trends; new leadership
Grant writer
Foundations making grants; nonprofits needing grants
EIN, name, address, status, ruling date, activity codes
Searchable database
Free
IRS Exempt Organisation Business Master File (EO BMF)
All tax-exempt organisations; basic data
CSV download (monthly)
Free
IRS Form 990 e-file data
Full 990 data for electronically filed returns
XML (bulk download from AWS)
Free
IRS Statistics of Income (SOI)
Aggregate statistics by organisation type
PDF, Excel
Free
Third-party 990 databases
Source
What it provides
Cost
GuideStar / Candid
990 data; organisational profiles; DEI data; mission
Free (basic); paid (premium features)
ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
990 data; searchable; downloadable
Free
Open990
Machine-readable 990 data
Free
Charity Navigator
Ratings; financial data; accountability
Free (basic); paid (API)
Foundation Directory Online (Candid)
Foundation grants; grantmaker profiles
Paid subscription
Foundation grant databases
Source
What it provides
Best for
Candid / Foundation Directory
Foundation grants by subject, geography, amount
Grant seekers identifying funders
990-PF filings (IRS)
Every grant made by every private foundation
Comprehensive foundation giving data
State attorney general charity databases
Registered charities by state
State-level nonprofit identification
Community foundation directories
Local and regional grantmaking
Geographic-specific grant seeking
Terms of service considerations
Allowed
Not allowed
Downloading IRS bulk data files (public data)
Scraping third-party databases that prohibit it
Using IRS EO BMF CSV downloads
Reselling GuideStar/Candid data without licence
Accessing ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer
Overwhelming IRS or state servers with automated requests
Searching GuideStar per their terms of use
Misrepresenting yourself to access restricted data
Purchasing commercial nonprofit data products
Using nonprofit data for fraudulent solicitation
FOIA requests for state charity data
Circumventing access controls on paid databases
Prospecting from 990 Data
By financial profile
Financial signal
What it indicates
Prospecting approach
Revenue $1M-$10M (growing)
Mid-size nonprofit investing in growth
"Your growth from $[X]M to $[Y]M over [X] years suggests infrastructure needs. Our [service] supports organisations at this stage..."
Revenue over $10M
Large organisation with professional management
"Organisations of [Name]'s size need [enterprise service]. We serve [X] nonprofits with budgets over $10M..."
Fundraising expense increasing
Investing in fundraising; may need consultant
"Your fundraising investment grew [X]% last year. Are you seeing proportional returns? Our clients average [X]:1 fundraising ROI..."
Programme service revenue high
Earned revenue model; business-like operations
"With $[X]M in programme service revenue, [Name] operates more like a social enterprise. Our [service] is designed for earned-revenue nonprofits..."
Significant investment assets
Endowment or reserves needing management
"With $[X]M in investment assets, [Name]'s endowment management is worth a review. Our nonprofit investment practice..."
New executive director / CEO
Leadership transition; new priorities and vendors
"Congratulations on your new role at [Name]. New leadership often brings fresh perspective on [service area]..."
Rapid employee growth
Hiring; HR needs increasing
"Growing from [X] to [Y] employees in [X] years, [Name] likely has increasing HR needs. Our nonprofit HR practice..."
By programme area
Programme area
Service opportunities
990 data signal
Education (K-12, higher ed)
EdTech; accreditation; assessment; fundraising
Programme descriptions; tuition revenue
Healthcare / social services
EHR; compliance; billing; insurance
Programme revenue; employee count; clinical staff
Arts and culture
Ticketing; donor management; marketing
Special events; contributions; membership
Environmental
Advocacy; membership; donor management
Contributions; programme descriptions
Religious
Church management; giving platforms; events
Contributions; employee count; assets
Human services
Case management; reporting; compliance
Government grants; programme descriptions
Processing Nonprofit Tax Data
When compiling prospect data from IRS EO BMF downloads (CSV), IRS Form 990 e-file data (XML), GuideStar / Candid profiles (HTML), ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer (HTML, CSV), Foundation Directory data, state attorney general charity registrations (HTML, CSV), nonprofit association directories and conference attendee lists, upload the files to Email Extractor to extract and deduplicate email addresses across all sources. Nonprofit organisations appear across IRS databases, GuideStar profiles, state charity registries, association directories and conference lists, so deduplication prevents contacting the same nonprofit leader through overlapping outreach from different data sources.
