Report Paints Grim Picture of Fiscal Health of Nonprofits

The pandemic has delivered a serious blow to the health of the nation’s nonprofits, which was already mixed before the spread of Covid-19, according to a report released Thursday.

Nearly 1 million nonprofit jobs were lost in the six-month period ending in September, according to the report, which was issued by Independent Sector, a membership organization of charities, foundations, and donors. About one-third of the lost jobs were related to health care.

For its first annual report on the health of U.S. nonprofits, Independent Sector compiled information on nonprofits’ finances, staffing, governance and public trust, and the impact of public policy on tax-exempt organizations. The goal is to gather information from a variety of sources and include it in a single volume for nonprofit leaders and policy makers to use.

From the information gathered in the report, Independent Sector provided a number of recommendations. They include the following:

• Revise nonprofits’ annual Form 990 filing to more accurately track government support to nonprofits, and conduct an annual survey of nonprofits on their government support.
• Push the Bureau of Labor Statistics to more regularly release data on nonprofit compensation, and analyze where pay gaps exist.
• Include Native Alaskan and Native American populations in national data, and do more to understand the experience members of these groups have at nonprofits.
• Conduct an annual study of nonprofit advocacy and civic participation, and identify ways to increase advocacy among nonprofits.