A place to aggregate questions about IRS 990 data access, documentation, meta-data, and inconsistencies or errors.
- A forum for people processing raw IRS data files to create standardized and enhanced data products.
- Contributors to the forum are volunteer experts, NOT IRS personnel.
- Experts have affiliations with a variety of professional and academic institutions. This forum is not associated with a specific organization.
The IRS has started to systematically release administrative data and meta-data related to over 1.5 million charitable organizations. The data, however, is complex. And documentation is often sparse.
This site was created to centalize discussions around data documentation, meta-data, and quality control issue in order to avoid duplication of efforts and make the open data more useful.
The forum is NOT intended for questions about analyzing data, unless they are related to things like documentation, meta-data, or systematic errors discovered in public datasets.
IRS Nonprofit Data
Data assets that are within the scope of this forum include:
- IRS 990 Filings
- Annual SOI Extracts: limited financial variables of all 990 filers (minus 990-N post-card filers).
- 990 Paper Filers: returns submitted to the IRS in paper form, typically archived as PDFs.
- 990 E-Filers: downloads of all electronic 990 filers starting in 2010.
- 990-N Postcard Filers: organizations with revenues below $50k and assets less than $250k.
- Database of Tax-Exempt Revocation: list of organizations that have given-up or lost their tax exempt status.
- Publication 78: Tax Exempt Organization Search (formerly Select Check).
- Business Master File: Cumulative list and attributes of all active tax-exempt organizations.
- Form 1023 and 1023-EZ meta-data.
Potential Issues
Common data issues include:
- Inadequate documentation
- Inadequate meta-data
- Missing files, filings, or variables
- Changes in variable definitions
- Harmonization of data over time
- Harmonization of a sample across forms
The IRS typically lacks contact information to answer questions related to administrative data that has been released to the public, so it can be challenging to find answers to these types of questions.
This forum is a place for experts and noeophytes to compare notes, share information, and contribute resources that help improve the quality and accessibility of the data.
Open Data Resources
For background reading about administrative nonprofit data and the movement to ensure it is open and free see:
There are dozens of individuals and institutions that are generating high-quality and free open data from archival data released by the IRS.
For examples of how this data is moving our field forward check out the Johnson Center’s helpful report:
Or browse reports and guides in the Resources Folder.