The nonprofit and corporate record

IRS exemption data and Form 990s — and the door that was shut to this build

The record: the Charities and Nonprofits files rest on the organizations' own records first — legacy pages, campaign releases, annual reports, published timelines — and on the federal charity register behind them: IRS exemption data and Form 990 filings, from which the files take their hard dates (the Community Foundation's exemption of May 1974 among them; United Way's formation in 1961; Goodwill's ruling of July 1938). One honest conflict lives here and is printed in both files until the assembly settles it: the Community Foundation's founding stands unsettled across its own record — its own text gives 1992, an aggregator 1991, and the IRS exemption May 1974 — three different kinds of date (a founding, a claim, a ruling) that this history declines to average into one.

The shut door: ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, the standard free reader of the 990 record, was blocked by policy in this build's working environment. The files were built instead from the same IRS data through Cause IQ, Instrumentl, TaxExemptWorld, Charity Navigator and GiveFreely renders — the same register, reached by other doors — and the substitution is documented in the Nonprofits file so a checker knows exactly which door each figure came through.

Sources:

1. IRS exemption data and Form 990 records, via Cause IQ, Instrumentl, TaxExemptWorld, Charity Navigator and GiveFreely.
2. The organizations' own published records, as listed in the Charities and Nonprofits files.