How The Chronicle Compiled Its Survey of America’s Biggest Charitable Groups

The 2010 Philanthropy 400 list marks the 20th year in which The Chronicle of Philanthropy has ranked charities by their fund-raising prowess.

To earn a spot on the list, charities may count cash and other types of gifts, including stock, real estate, and other noncash gifts to determine how much they raise from private sources. The Chronicle compiles the rankings using data from each charity’s Form 990, the informational tax return that charities must file annually with the Internal Revenue Service. Annual reports, financial statements, and a Chronicle survey based on the Form 990 provide additional sources of data.

In the case of organizations with affiliates, The Chronicle seeks consolidated data that represent the full activity of an organization, and in many cases such data come from financial statements. Some religious groups are included because they provided their data to The Chronicle even though they are exempt from federal requirements to disclose their finances publicly.

More Data Available

The rankings in 2010 are based on donations raised in the fiscal year that ended in 2009, or in 2010 for organizations with fiscal years ending in January, February, or March. Forty-one charities are included based on data from the 2008 fiscal year because they could not provide 2009 data by The Chronicle’s deadline, in many cases because the IRS had granted them an extended deadline for filing their Form 990.

The money raised by Philanthropy 400 charities does not include government support, and for that reason some charities with big budgets are not included in the rankings. The list also counts only domestic giving: No donations raised overseas are counted, even though some organizations have international affiliates.

To gather consistent data on college and university fund raising, The Chronicle relied on an annual survey of such institutions by the Council for Aid to Education, in New York, to rank those organizations. An important difference between the 990 and the council’s survey affects how they count pledges: The 990 allows charities to include pledges in fund-raising figures, but the council’s survey counts only money in hand.

Although the key piece of information that determines an organization’s rank on the Philanthropy 400 is the money raised from private sources, The Chronicle also gathered data on charities’ expenses, including fund-raising and program costs. Those data are available on The Chronicle’s Web site.

In 2009 some organizations suffered large declines, in part because they changed how they value donations of medicine, food, and other noncash gifts as a way to count the donations more accurately.

Brother’s Brother Foundation, for example—No. 59 this year but No. 6 on the previous year’s list—is valuing its product donations at 70 percent less than it did the previous year. Direct Relief International in 2010 changed its valuation system so that products are worth about 17 percent less than the value it used in 2009. (The charity ranked No. 109 this year, down from No. 98.)

A searchable database of all the charities on the Philanthropy 400, their private support, and other key data are online at http://philanthropy.com/extras. The Chronicle strives to include all charities that might be eligible for the Philanthropy 400. To submit a nonprofit group that should be included in next year’s survey, send an e-mail message to survey@philanthropy.com.

The Philanthropy 400 was compiled by Noelle Barton, Marisa López-Rivera, and Alex Richards, with assistance from Beth Amedeo, Grace Bacon, Emma L. Carew, Jane Coaston, Jon Hood, Sheila V Kumar, Lisa Marrs, Alissa Moen, and Chris Thompson.