January 24, 2002 | Read Time: 1 minute
Detailed reports on individual charities’ financial data are now available through Philanthropic Research, the Williamsburg, Va., nonprofit group that runs the GuideStar Web site.
GuideStar Analyst Reports are currently available on approximately 160,000 charities, and are based on data from Forms 990, the informational tax returns that nonprofit groups file with the Internal Revenue Service. Each report provides information on the organization’s revenue, expenses, assets, and liabilities, as well as such ratios as the percentage of the organization’s total expenses devoted to charitable activities versus the percentage devoted to administration and fund raising, and its fund-raising costs measured as a percentage of contributions raised.
Each report also compares the group being profiled to other nonprofit organizations within a 25-mile radius and to organizations across the country with similar missions.
“It gives you an idea of where an individual organization fits against its peers,” says Suzanne E. Coffman, Philanthropic Research’s director of communications. “You can’t just say, ‘Oh, fund-raising ratio or program ratio.’ You have to see how those things compare to similar organizations.”
Individual reports cost $59 in portable document format (PDF) and $69 for a printed copy. Charities that provide information about their work and finances receive a discount. One-year subscriptions, available for $1,000, allow subscribers to gain access to an unlimited number of reports.
For more information: Go to http://www.guidestar.org.
