Charity Navigator Scraper

Search Charity Navigator and export public charity profiles for nonprofit research, donor due diligence, grant review, and repeatable ratings analysis.

The Actor accepts charity names, causes, locations, and direct Charity Navigator profile URLs. It returns identity, EIN, mission, location, cause categories, star rating, overall score, score components, and latest available financial metrics in a structured dataset.

What does Charity Navigator Scraper do?

Charity Navigator Scraper automates public research on charitynavigator.org.

It can:

• search charities by name, cause, or location phrase;
• extract a known charity from its /ein/ profile URL;
• export the public organization name and EIN;
• collect mission, website, phone, and physical location;
• collect cause and NTEE classifications;
• collect star ratings and normalized 0–100 overall scores;
• collect available evaluation-area score components;
• collect the latest public tax-period financial metrics;
• deduplicate charities discovered by several inputs;
• stop at a user-defined record limit;
• export results as JSON, CSV, Excel, XML, RSS, or another Apify dataset format.

No Charity Navigator account, API key, browser, or user-supplied proxy is required.

Why use this Actor?

A Charity Navigator profile combines signals that are otherwise time-consuming to copy into a spreadsheet: identity, mission, classifications, location, rating, score components, and tax-return figures.

This Actor turns those public profiles into consistent records while keeping each source URL for verification. The same input can support a one-time shortlist, a scheduled snapshot, or a downstream nonprofit-data pipeline.

The direct HTTP implementation reads server-rendered source data. It avoids browser overhead and does not depend on a private Charity Navigator API credential.

Who is it for?

Donors and donor-advised funds

Compare charity missions, ratings, scores, and financial scale before deciding which organizations need deeper review.

Foundations and grant makers

Create a structured first-pass diligence dataset for prospective grantees. Preserve EINs and source URLs for entity matching and manual verification.

Nonprofit researchers

Search a cause or location, then analyze rating availability, classification, organization size, and financial metrics across profiles.

Journalists and analysts

Build reproducible source lists and retain collection timestamps for public-interest research.

CRM and data teams

Enrich known charity records from direct profile URLs or search terms and send the dataset to a spreadsheet, warehouse, or automation platform.

Developers

Call one Actor API instead of maintaining search-page discovery, React payload decoding, profile parsing, retries, deduplication, and schema normalization.

What data can I extract?

Field	Meaning
name	Public charity name
ein	Nine-digit Employer Identification Number
profileUrl	Direct Charity Navigator source profile
mission	Published mission statement
website	Public charity website when available
phone	Public phone number when available
city, state, postalCode, country	Physical location fields
address	Normalized full physical address
categories	Charity Navigator cause categories
nteeCode, nteeType	Published NTEE classification
organizationType	IRS subsection description
organizationSize	Charity Navigator size band
ratingStars	Current star rating when eligible
ratingScore	Current overall score normalized to 0–100
ratingEligible	Whether the profile is rating-eligible
profileComplete	Whether the source marks the profile complete
scoreComponents	Available evaluation-area scores and reference weights
financialMetrics	Latest revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities, net assets, and expense components
sourceUpdatedAt	Source update timestamp when published
scrapedAt	Actor collection timestamp

Missing source values are returned as null or an empty array. The Actor does not invent ratings or fill gaps from another provider.

How to search Charity Navigator

1. Open the Actor input page.
2. Add one or more terms under Search queries.
3. Use a charity name, cause, city, state, or a combination such as food bank Texas.
4. Set Maximum charities to the dataset size you need.
5. Click Start.
6. Open the default dataset.
7. Export or integrate the rows in your preferred format.

Start with a small limit to inspect how broad a query is before scheduling a larger run.

Input parameters

queries

An array of up to 20 search terms.

{
  "queries": ["food bank Texas"],
  "maxItems": 5
}

Queries use Charity Navigator's public search behavior. The number of matching public profiles depends on the source.

startUrls

An array of direct Charity Navigator profile URLs.

{
  "startUrls": [
    { "url": "https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/530196605" }
  ],
  "maxItems": 1
}

Accepted URLs must use charitynavigator.org/ein/ followed by a nine-digit EIN. Unrelated domains and non-profile paths fail validation.

maxItems

The maximum number of unique profiles saved across all queries and URLs.

• minimum: 1
• default: 25
• maximum: 1000

The Actor deduplicates profiles by their canonical EIN URL.

Output example

A current profile record has this shape:

{
  "name": "American Red Cross",
  "ein": "530196605",
  "profileUrl": "https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/530196605",
  "mission": "Since its founding in 1881 ...",
  "website": "https://www.redcross.org/",
  "phone": "202-303-4498",
  "city": "Washington",
  "state": "DC",
  "postalCode": "20006",
  "country": "USA",
  "address": "431 Eighteenth Street, NW, Washington DC 20006, USA",
  "categories": [
    "Safety education",
    "Disasters and emergency management",
    "Blood banks",
    "International development"
  ],
  "nteeCode": "P21",
  "nteeType": "Human Services - Multipurpose and Other",
  "organizationType": "Charitable Organization",
  "organizationSize": "SUPER",
  "ratingStars": 4,
  "ratingScore": 91,
  "ratingEligible": true,
  "profileComplete": true,
  "scoreComponents": [
    {
      "name": "financialHealth",
      "score": 100,
      "referenceWeight": 7.36
    }
  ],
  "financialMetrics": {
    "taxPeriodEnd": "2025-06-30T04:00:00.000Z",
    "revenue": 3916983933,
    "expenses": 3285857544,
    "assets": 5052941623,
    "liabilities": 936710734,
    "netAssets": 4116230889,
    "programExpenses": 2985109298,
    "fundraisingExpenses": 195050607,
    "administrativeExpenses": 105697639,
    "contributions": 1312795481
  },
  "sourceUpdatedAt": "2026-08-25T03:41:35.953Z",
  "scrapedAt": "2026-08-28T14:30:00.000Z"
}

Values change when Charity Navigator updates a profile. Always use profileUrl to verify a finding that affects a donation, grant, or compliance decision.

Charity ratings due diligence workflow

Use direct URLs when you already have an EIN shortlist.

1. Convert each known EIN into https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/{EIN}.
2. Save the URLs in an Apify Task.
3. Run the Task before a review cycle or on a schedule.
4. Export ratingScore, scoreComponents, and financialMetrics to your analysis tool.
5. Compare the new snapshot with your previous stored dataset.
6. Send material differences to a human reviewer.

The Actor exports current snapshots. It does not itself calculate changes, make recommendations, or send alerts.

CharityNavigator.org alphabetical listing research

A broad alphabetical or cause-based research job can be split into bounded queries. Use distinct names, causes, or location phrases and set an overall maxItems limit.

Search results are deduplicated before profiles are fetched. A profile found through more than one query is charged and saved only once.

This Actor is designed for useful bounded research, not an undocumented promise to reproduce every charity in the entire source database in one run.

How much does it cost to extract Charity Navigator profiles?

The Actor uses pay-per-event pricing:

• one start event per run at $0.005;
• one item event for each saved charity profile;
• mission, score components, and financial metrics inside a profile have no separate charge.

At the BRONZE tier, each saved profile is $0.0072.

Example event counts:

Saved profiles	Charged events
1	1 start + 1 item
5	1 start + 5 items
25	1 start + 25 items
100	1 start + 100 items

Multiply the active per-item tier price by the saved profile count and add the one-time start event. Higher-volume subscription tiers receive lower per-item prices. Charges apply only to successfully normalized profiles saved to the default dataset.

API usage with cURL

Start a synchronous run and return dataset items:

curl -X POST \
  "https://api.apify.com/v2/acts/automation-lab~charity-navigator-profiles-ratings-scraper/run-sync-get-dataset-items?token=$APIFY_TOKEN" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "queries": ["food bank Texas"],
    "maxItems": 5
  }'

Keep the token in an environment variable or secret manager.

API usage with JavaScript

import { ApifyClient } from 'apify-client';

const client = new ApifyClient({ token: process.env.APIFY_TOKEN });
const run = await client.actor('automation-lab/charity-navigator-profiles-ratings-scraper').call({
  startUrls: [
    { url: 'https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/530196605' },
  ],
  maxItems: 1,
});

const { items } = await client.dataset(run.defaultDatasetId).listItems();
console.log(items);

API usage with Python

import os
from apify_client import ApifyClient

client = ApifyClient(os.environ['APIFY_TOKEN'])
run = client.actor('automation-lab/charity-navigator-profiles-ratings-scraper').call(run_input={
    'queries': ['veterans services'],
    'maxItems': 10,
})

items = client.dataset(run['defaultDatasetId']).list_items().items
print(items)

Use with Apify MCP

Add the Actor to Claude Code:

claude mcp add --transport http apify \
  "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/charity-navigator-profiles-ratings-scraper"

Then ask:

Search Charity Navigator for food banks in Texas and summarize each charity's rating, mission, and latest revenue.

Or use direct profiles:

Extract these Charity Navigator EIN profile URLs and create a table of star rating, overall score, financial health score, revenue, expenses, and assets.

Claude Desktop setup

Use the following MCP server configuration in Claude Desktop.

Cursor setup

Add the same MCP server URL in Cursor's MCP settings.

VS Code setup

Add the same MCP server URL through your VS Code MCP extension or workspace MCP settings.

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "apify": {
      "url": "https://mcp.apify.com?tools=automation-lab/charity-navigator-profiles-ratings-scraper"
    }
  }
}

Store your Apify authentication using your MCP client's secure environment or secret mechanism.

Example prompts for MCP:

• Use the Charity Navigator Scraper MCP tool to search for food banks in Texas and return five rated profiles.
• Use MCP to extract the Charity Navigator profile for EIN 530196605 and summarize rating score components and financial metrics.

Integrations

Google Sheets

Schedule a Task, then use Make, Zapier, or an Apify integration to append the current charity snapshot to a sheet.

Data warehouses

Fetch default dataset items after each run and upsert records by ein. Keep scrapedAt to distinguish snapshots.

CRM enrichment

Match organizations by EIN. Use names only as supporting context because names can change or collide.

Webhooks

Attach a webhook to successful Actor runs, then send the dataset ID to your processing service.

Scheduled research

Save stable direct profile URLs as a Task and schedule it. Compare datasets downstream; the Actor does not retain or diff prior snapshots.

Tips for reliable results

• Prefer direct profile URLs for a known EIN shortlist.
• Use specific search phrases instead of very broad single words.
• Start with a low maxItems value to inspect query relevance.
• Keep the source URL in any downstream report.
• Treat null as unavailable upstream data, not a zero.
• Compare financial values only when the tax periods are compatible.
• Do not treat a star rating as a substitute for independent diligence.

Limits and failure behavior

• Only public Charity Navigator /ein/ profiles are supported.
• Search breadth and ranking are controlled by Charity Navigator.
• Some organizations are not eligible for a rating.
• Some profiles have no mission, component scores, or recent tax-return metrics.
• A source page can change after extraction.
• The Actor retries temporary network failures and HTTP 429 or 5xx responses up to a bounded limit.
• Unsupported URLs and malformed input fail the run rather than being silently ignored.
• If a search naturally has no results, the run succeeds with an empty dataset.
• If discovered profiles all fail extraction, the run fails instead of returning a misleading empty success.

Responsible use and legality

This Actor extracts publicly displayed charity information. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or operated by Charity Navigator.

Use the data in accordance with applicable laws, Charity Navigator's terms, and your organization's policies. Avoid excessive collection, do not use the output for harassment or automated high-impact decisions, and independently verify consequential findings.

Charity ratings and financial figures are research inputs, not legal, tax, investment, or donation advice.

Troubleshooting

Why did my search return fewer profiles than maxItems?

maxItems is a ceiling, not a guarantee. Charity Navigator may expose fewer matching public profiles for a specific query.

Why is ratingScore null?

The organization may be unrated or ineligible. Check ratingEligible and the source profile.

Why is financialMetrics null?

The profile may not expose a usable latest tax return. The Actor does not substitute figures from another provider.

Why was my URL rejected?

Use a direct URL in the form https://www.charitynavigator.org/ein/530196605. Search pages, unrelated domains, and malformed EIN paths are not accepted in startUrls.

Can I monitor changes?

Yes, by scheduling a Task and comparing saved datasets in your own workflow. The Actor produces snapshots; it does not send alerts or calculate a change history.

FAQ

Does it require a Charity Navigator login?

No. It reads public server-rendered search and profile data.

Can I search by EIN?

Use the direct /ein/{EIN} profile URL for deterministic EIN lookup.

Are all charities rated?

No. Unrated and ineligible profiles can still contain identity, mission, category, location, or financial data.

Does it download IRS PDFs?

No. It exports the latest financial metrics exposed in the public Charity Navigator profile and does not download filing documents.

Can I export to Excel or CSV?

Yes. Open the default dataset and choose an available Apify export format.

Does it scrape private donor information?

No. The output is limited to public charity profile data.

Related automation-lab Actors

• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer Scraper — use for IRS filing history and ProPublica nonprofit records.
• UK Charity Commission Register Scraper — use for registered charities in England and Wales.

Use the source-specific Actor that matches the jurisdiction and evidence needed for your workflow.

Support

For reproducible help, include:

• the Actor run URL;
• a redacted input example;
• the expected charity or EIN;
• the observed dataset behavior.

Do not post API tokens, cookies, or private credentials.