Nonprofit Financial Lookup — IRS 990, Summarized

Every US 501(c) nonprofit above a size threshold files a Form 990 — public by law. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer already parses this into structured JSON, free and keyless. Grant-seeking nonprofits currently research a potential funder's giving history by hand, PDF by PDF, on IRS's own clunky viewer.

This turns a name into a financial profile: revenue/expense trend, assets, liabilities, and the latest filing's key figures — in one row, not a document to read.

Input

{ "organizations": ["American Red Cross", "United Way Worldwide"] }

An approximate name is fine — ProPublica's own search relevance scoring picks the best match.

Sample output

{
  "matchedQuery": "American Red Cross",
  "ein": 530196605,
  "name": "American National Red Cross",
  "city": "Washington",
  "state": "DC",
  "latestFilingYear": 2023,
  "latestRevenue": 3217077611,
  "latestExpenses": 2971106889,
  "latestAssets": 4028321133,
  "expenseToRevenueRatio": 0.924,
  "revenueTrend": "stable",
  "filingsOnFile": 13,
  "latestFilingUrl": "https://..."
}

Typical uses

• Grant-seeking research — check a potential funder's actual giving capacity and financial trajectory before applying.
• Donor due diligence — verify an organization's financial health before a major gift.
• Competitive intelligence — nonprofits sizing up peer organizations' revenue and program spending.
• Journalism / watchdog research — spot a revenue or asset trend worth investigating.

Pricing

$3.00 / 1,000 results ($0.003 per organization profile).

⚠️ Read before you act

• Name matching uses ProPublica's own search relevance score and takes the top result — for a common name ("United Way" has hundreds of local chapters), verify the returned EIN/city/state is the specific organization you meant before relying on the financials.
• revenueTrend compares only the two most recent filings (±10% = growing/shrinking, else stable) — a single-year swing, not a multi-year trajectory. Check filingsOnFile and pull the full filing history yourself for deeper trend analysis.
• Data lag is real. Form 990s are filed annually with a real delay — latestFilingYear may be a year or more behind the current date, which is normal for this kind of public filing.

FAQ

• Do I need an API key? No — ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer API is free and keyless.
• What if my organization isn't found? Either it's below the filing threshold (small nonprofits file a simpler form with less financial detail, or none at all), or the name needs adjusting — check the problems report.
• What does expenseToRevenueRatio mean? Expenses divided by revenue for the latest filing — above 1.0 means the organization spent more than it took in that year, a real but not necessarily alarming signal (some years draw down reserves intentionally).

Related actors

• Financial Complaint Monitor — the same "official public filing, summarized into a profile" pattern, for CFPB financial-company complaints.
• Federal Award Intelligence — another public-filing-as-profile actor, for federal contract award history.