National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) Code system is used by the IRS and NCCS to classify nonprofit organizations. It is also used by the Foundation Center to classify both grants and grant recipients (typically nonprofits or governments). NCCS and the IRS use the NTEE-CC system, described below, while the Foundation Center uses a slightly different version with more codes, as well as “population/beneficiary” codes to indicate the type of population served and “auspice” codes to indicate religious or governmental affiliation.
Both the structure and the interpretation of an NTEE code varies by the type of nonprofit it describes, regular or specialty. Most nonprofits are regular organizations, i.e. ones that are organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit. Some nonprofits are specialty organizations. Specialty organizations are those whose primary mission is to provide advocacy, research, fundraising, and/or technical assistance to separate nonprofit(s).
Original NTEE Code Structure
Regular Nonprofits
Regular nonprofits have NTEE codes with three characters, one letter followed by two numbers. The letter represents the major group, the first number represents the division, and the second number represents the subdivision. Subdivisions are nested inside divisions, which are nested inside major groups, which are nested inside broad categories. There are a total of 26 major groups nested inside 12 broad categories. Each major group contains between 1 and 8 divisions, and each division contains between 1 and 10 subdivisions.
The 26 major groups and their corresponding letters are:
| NTEE Major Group | Description |
|---|---|
| A | Arts, Culture & Humanities |
| B | Education |
| C | Environment |
| D | Animal-Related |
| E | Health Care |
| F | Mental Health & Crisis Intervention |
| G | Voluntary Health Associations & Medical Disciplines |
| H | Medical Research |
| I | Crime & Legal-Related |
| J | Employment |
| K | Food, Agriculture & Nutrition |
| L | Housing & Shelter |
| M | Public Safety, Disaster Preparedness & Relief |
| N | Recreation & Sports |
| O | Youth Development |
| P | Human Services |
| Q | International, Foreign Affairs & National Security |
| R | Civil Rights, Social Action & Advocacy |
| S | Community Improvement & Capacity Building |
| T | Philanthropy, Voluntarism & Grantmaking Foundations |
| U | Science & Technology |
| V | Social Science |
| W | Public & Societal Benefit |
| X | Religion-Related |
| Y | Mutual & Membership Benefit |
| Z | Unknown |
The NTEE classification system divides the universe of nonprofit organizations into 26 major groups (letters A - Z) under 12 broad categories (numbers 1-12) as follows:
Arts, Culture, and Humanities (ART) - A
Education (EDU) - B, excluding NTEE codes B40, B41, B42, and B43
Environment and Animals (ENV) - C, D
Health (HEL) - E, F,G, H, excluding NTEE codes E20, E21, E22, and E24
Human Services(HMS)- I, J, K, L, M, N, O, P
International, Foreign Affairs (IFA) - Q
Public, Societal Benefit (PSB) - R, S, T, U, V, W
Religion Related (REL) - X
Mutual/Membership Benefit (MMB) - Y
Unknown, Unclassified (UNU)- Z
Universities (UNI) - NTEE codes B40, B41, B42,and B43
Hospitals (HOS) - NTEE codes E20, E21, E22, and E24
Universities and hospitals have been separated in different broad categories from the rest of their respective major groups due to their differences in size and scope of mission. Divisions range from 2 - 9, and subdivisions range from 0 - 9. Thus, the two digits for a NTEE code for any regular nonprofit will range from 20 to 99. Divisions are only interpretable within major groups. For example, consider A20 and B20. The division in each of these codes (first digit, “2”) has a different interpretation because their major groups (letters A and B, respectively) are different. Similarly, subdivisions are only interpretable within divisions. For example, consider P21 and P31. The subdivision in each of these codes (second digit “1”) has a different interpretation because their divisions (first digits “2” and “3”, respectively) are different, even though they are within the same major group. For a full list of divisions and subdivisions see the list of NTEE all regular codes here.
All regular NTEE codes are listed in the ntee.orig data
set.
Speciality Nonprofits
The primary difference between regular and specialty NTEE codes is the structure of the divisions. All specialty nonprofits must have an NTEE code with a minimum of three characters, one letter followed by two numbers. Just as with regular nonprofits, the letter represents the major group. However, the two numbers do not have the same interpretation as regular nonprofits. For specialty nonprofits, the two numbers together represent the type of support the nonprofit provides. There are only seven options for these two numbers,
- 01 - Alliance/Advocacy Organizations (AA)
- 02 - Management and Technical Assistance (MT)
- 03 - Professional Societies/Associations (PS)
- 05 - Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis (RP)
- 11 - Monetary Support - Single Organization (MS)
- 12 - Monetary Support - Multiple Organizations (MM)
- 19 - Nonmonetary Support Not Elsewhere Classified (NS)
Here we can see that across all major groups, any NTEE code with its two digits less than 20 describes a specialty nonprofit, and any NTEE code with its two digits greater than or equal to 20 describes a regular nonprofit.
Specialty organizations have the option to have a five character NTEE code, one letter followed by four digits. The letter describes the major group, the first two digits are any of the seven options above describing the type of support the nonprofit provides, then the last two digits represent the division and subdivision, respectively, of the nonprofit they provide support to. For example, B1140 would designate a nonprofit that provides college and university fundraising under B11 Monetary Support, and the “40” was chosen from the B40 division and subdivision representing Higher Education Institutions. Conversely, high school booster clubs would be classified as B1120 (B11 Monetary Support - Single Organization plus B20 Elementary, Secondary Education, K-12).
Another example of coding is a professional society called “The Learned Society of Landscape Photographers” would be given an NTEE code of A0340; the major group is A for Arts, the common code 03 designates the organization as a professional society and the last two digits (“40”) signifies visual arts organizations. An organization that raises funds for a specific organization, such as a single hospital (“Friends of St. Christopher Hospital”) receives a code of E1120; an organization that raises funds for several hospitals (“Friends of Memphis Hospitals”) receives a code of E1220. Specialty NTEE codes follow the same broad category distinctions as regular NTEE codes. Because no specialty nonprofit itself can be a university or a hospital (although they can still provide support to universities or hospitals), no specialty NTEE code will have a broad category of 11 or 12.
NTEE Code structure
Here we provide a visual dendrogram that captures the overall NTEE Code structure. Hover the mouse over each node to see more information. Click on each node to expand it and see the categories inside of it.
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We define the Disaggregated NTEE codes to more clearly represent the nested structure of the original NTEE codes and to have one interpretation for both regular and specialty organizations.
Definitions
For any nonprofit, Organization \(i\) with any NTEE code, we define the following attributes:
\(OrgType_i \in \{RG, AA, MT, PS, RP, MS, MM, NS\}\) be the organization type of Organization \(i\), represents Regular Nonprofit, Alliance/Advocacy Organizations, Management and Technical Assistance, Professional Societies/Associations, Research Institutes and/or Public Policy Analysis, Monetary Support - Single Organization, Monetary Support - Multiple Organizations, or Nonmonetary Support Not Elsewhere Classified, respectively, according to the list above.
\(BroadCategory_i \in \{ART, EDU, ENV, HEL, HMS, IFA, PSB, REL, MMB, UNU, UNI, HOS\}\) be the broad category of Organization \(i\), found using the list above.
\(MajorGroup_i \in \{A, B, ... , Z\}\) be the major group Organization \(i\), which is is letter in the original NTEE code.
-
\(TwoDigit_i \in \{ 00, 20, 21, ... , 99\}\) be intermediary step where
- for regular organizations \(TwoDigit_i\) is the two digits in the original NTEE code (2nd and 3rd characters of original NTEE code),
- for specialty organizations without a further categorization (the original NTEE code is three characters), \(TwoDigit_i = 00\), and
- for specialty organizations with a further categorization (the original NTEE code is five characters), \(TwoDigitS_i\) is the last two digits of the NTEE code (4th and 5th characters of the NTEE code).
\(Division_i \in \{0, 2, 3, ..., 9\}\) be the division describing the area that the nonprofit works in. For all organization types, \(Division_i\) is the first digit of \(TwoDigit_i\).
\(SubDivision_i \in \{0,1, 2, 3, ..., 9\}\) be the subdivision describing the area that the nonprofit works in. For all organization types, \(SubDivision_i\) is the second digit of \(TwoDigit_i\).
Then the final disaggregated code is structured as follows:
where the first part is the two letters representing the organization type, the second part is the three letters representing the broad category, and the third part represents the letter of the major group, the number of the division, and the number of the subdivision.