More than 800,000 Organizations Hold Charity Status, IRS Says

November 1, 2001 | Read Time: 2 minutes

More than 800,000 charities and private foundations were registered with the Internal Revenue Service as of September 30, 2000, according to figures just released by the tax agency.

The number of groups classified under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code rose by 45,074, or 5.8 percent, from 1999 to 2000, according to the revenue service.

In 2000, 819,008 organizations, including 80,420 private foundations, were registered with the federal government, compared with 773,934 in 1999.

The number of private foundations grew by 4.1 percent from 1999 to 2000, up from 77,287 in 1999, the revenue service said.

The growth in the number of charitable organizations has been fairly consistent in recent years.

They increased by 5.5 percent from 1998 to 1999, 6 percent from 1997 to 1998, and 5.9 percent from 1996 to 1997.

The IRS has acknowledged that an unknown number of the groups classified under Section 501(c)(3) are still on the government’s books even though they have shut down.

The revenue service’s statistics show that the total number of tax-exempt organizations classified under all of Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue Code rose by 41,748, or 3.2 percent, from 1999 to 2000.

The statistics were published in the 2000 edition of the Internal Revenue Service’s Data Book, which is available online at at http://www.irs.gov/prod/tax_stats/soi/other_ia.html.

The chart below shows the number of organizations registered under each subcategory of Section 501(c) in 1999 and 2000, as well as the number of tax-exemption applications approved and denied in 2000 by the Internal Revenue Service’s field offices.

Tax-Exempt Organizations Registered With the IRS

	Applications				Organizations registered
	Approved	Denied	Other¹	Total	1999	2000
Section 501(c):
(1) Corporations organized under act of Congress	0	0	2	2	18	20
(2) Titleholding corporations	165	0	51	216	7,042	7,009
(3) Religious, charitable, etc.	61,005	456	13,073	74,534	773,934²	819,0082
(4) Social welfare	1,681	9	622	2,312	138,927	137,037
(5) Labor, agriculture organizations	468	0	86	554	63,716	63,456
(6) Business leagues	1,718	8	307	2,033	81,493	82,246
(7) Social and recreation clubs	928	8	585	1,521	67,044	67,246
(8) Fraternal beneficiary societies	19	0	10	29	84,519	81,980
(9) Voluntary employees’ beneficiary associations	353	0	55	408	13,886	13,595
(10) Domestic fraternal beneficiary societies	26	0	31	57	22,802	23,487
(11) Teachers’ retirement funds	1	0	0	1	14	15
(12) Benevolent life-insurance associations	102	1	33	136	6,462	6,489
(13) Cemetery companies	219	0	29	248	9,963	10,132
(14) State-chartered credit unions	3	0	0	3	4,408	4,320
(15) Mutual-insurance companies	161	0	3	164	1,296	1,342
(16) Corporations to finance crop operations	0	0	0	0	23	22
(17) Supplemental unemployment benefit trusts	13	0	1	14	518	501
(18) Employee-funded pension trusts	0	0	0	0	2	2
(19) War-veterans’ organizations	141	0	43	184	35,428	35,249
(21) Black-lung trusts	0	0	0	0	28	28
(22) Multi-employer pension plans	0	0	0	0	0	0
(23) Veterans’ associations founded prior to 1880	0	0	0	0	2	2
(24) Trusts described in section 4049 of ERISA	0	0	0	0	1	1
(25) Holding companies for pensions, etc.	231	0	7	238	1,107	1,192
(26) State-sponsored high-risk health-insurance organizations	0	0	0	0	9	9
(27) State-sponsored workers’ compensation reinsurance organizations	0	0	0	0	5	7
Total	67,234	482	14,938	82,654	1,312,647	1,354,395
Note: Section 501(c)(20), which was formerly used to classify legal-service organizations, has been abolished. 1. Includes cases in which organizations withdrew the applications or failed to furnish required information. 2. All Section 501(c)(3) organizations are not included because certain organizations (such as churches, integrated auxiliaries, subordinate units, and conventions or associations of churches) need not apply for recognition of tax exemption unless they desire a ruling.
SOURCE: Internal Revenue Service