{"id":1902,"date":"2014-12-22T10:39:52","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T16:39:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/?p=1902"},"modified":"2014-12-17T10:59:29","modified_gmt":"2014-12-17T16:59:29","slug":"guidestar-or-find-the-form-990","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mooreds.com\/wordpress\/archives\/1902","title":{"rendered":"GuideStar, or Find the Form 990"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by jurvetson<\/a> \"\"<\/a><\/small><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Tis the season!\u00a0 You may not give as much as Bill Gates<\/a> (in fact, I bet you don’t).\u00a0 But, if you give money to any non profits, you should be aware that the IRS requires every 501(c)(3) organization to file a form 990. (This post is not going to be useful to my readers in other countries, but I’d be interested to know if there are analogous services elsewhere.)<\/p>\n

That form 990 is required to be publicly available<\/a>. You can request a copy as well.<\/p>\n

But, you may be in the middle of making a donation, or you may not want to contact the organization to request a 990. GuideStar<\/a> is a non-profit information aggregator, and they have 990’s for most organizations. You do have to create a free account, but that’s it. If you pay for a premium account, you have access to more years of 990s, but I’ve found that for the casual inquiry, what the free account provides is enough.<\/p>\n

There is all kinds of interesting information in the 990. Here’s the 2013 990 for the New York City Ballet<\/a>. In it, we can see that this organization:<\/p>\n