July 20, 2020 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Religious organizations; elementary and secondary schools; and civic, social, and social-advocacy organizations were the most common types of nonprofit that received loans of $150,000 or more under the Paycheck Protection Program, according to a Chronicle of Philanthropy analysis of loan data provided by the Small Business Administration.
According to the data, 42,462 nonprofit organizations received loans of between $150,000 and $10 million. The goal of the Paycheck Protection Program is to encourage employers to keep their workers on the payroll during the coronavirus pandemic. If employers maintain their work force, the loans are mostly forgivable.
Of those 42,462 nonprofits, 9,238, or 21.8 percent, were religious organizations; 5,647, or 13.3 percent, were elementary and secondary schools; and 6.3 percent were civic, social, or social-advocacy organizations. See the full data set.
However, Tim Delaney, president and CEO of the National Council of Nonprofits, cautioned that the data released by the Small Business Administration is riddled with inaccuracies that make it hard to gauge the true impact of the loan program and clouds analysis of which types of nonprofits used the program the most.
“Garbage in, garbage out,” said Delaney. “America is relying on charitable nonprofits to take care of the public, and we deserve to have the data so we can inform policy makers on how broken the system is.”
Delaney noted that the data is derived from the program’s application forms, where nonprofits supplied their own categorization. For some groups that straddle multiple sectors, that might be tricky.
“My former wife runs an Episcopal day school,” Delaney said. “Is she filling this out as a religious organization? Is she filling this out as a day care? Is she filling this out as a preschool? I think everything is suspect because the SBA has provided bad data.”
Despite that, Delaney said the Chronicle’s analysis broadly aligns with his organization’s internal analysis of the data.
The Chronicle analysis combined some related nonprofit categories. For instance, “civic, social, and social-advocacy organizations” consolidates loan recipients identified as either “civic and social organizations” or “other social-advocacy organizations.”
A previous Chronicle analysis showed that more than 400 nonprofits nationwide got loans of $5 million to $10 million through the Paycheck Protection Program, the largest amount any organization could receive. That analysis includes a sortable spreadsheet with the names of all those nonprofits.
