NY Attorney General Charities Bureau Registry Scraper

Scrape the New York Attorney General's Charities Bureau public registry. Search registered organizations by name, registration number, EIN, city, or state; look up dissolution and merger transactions; or pull multi-year fundraising campaign reports from Pennies for Charity. Returns registration status/category, EIN, full address, and direct links to registration documents, annual filings, and financial reports. Pure JSON API, no login required.

What this actor does

• Three modes: registrySearch (organizations), transactionSearch (dissolutions & mergers), penniesForCharity (fundraising campaign financials)
• Full detail enrichment: every registrySearch match is enriched with address, county, website, and categorized document links from its registry detail page
• Financial enrichment: every penniesForCharity match is enriched with gross receipts, net to charity, uncollected pledges, and percent to charity from that filing's detail record
• Document links: direct download URLs for registration statements, annual filings, IRS reports, and transaction filings, where the Bureau makes them downloadable
• Empty fields are omitted — a record only contains fields the Bureau actually published for that organization/transaction/report

Output: per organization (mode = registrySearch)

• orgName — registered organization name
• orgID — Charities Bureau registration number (format NN-NN-NN)
• ein — Federal tax ID
• regType — CLT / CRT / Estates / NFP
• regStatute — registration category (e.g. Exempt, EPTL, Article 7-A, Dual)
• address, address2, city, state, zip, country
• county
• website
• registrationDocuments[] — { displayName, received, downloadUrl }
• otherFiledDocuments[] — { displayName, received, downloadUrl }
• annualFilingDocuments[] — { displayName, fiscalYearEnd, received, downloadUrl }
• sourceUrl — canonical registry detail-page URL
• recordType: "charityOrganization", scrapedAt

Output: per transaction (mode = transactionSearch)

• transactionType — Dissolution or NPCL 510/511
• oagNumber — Office of the Attorney General case number
• orgName
• address — submitting attorney/firm address
• approvalDate
• submittedBy — filing attorney
• documentUrl — direct link to the filed document, when available
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "charityTransaction", scrapedAt

Output: per fundraising report (mode = penniesForCharity)

• orgId — Charities Bureau registration number
• orgName
• fundraiserName — professional fundraiser conducting the campaign
• fundraiserOrgId
• filingYear
• reportType — e.g. Interim, Closing
• geoArea, geoAreaName — New York region code and name
• grossReceipts, netToCharity, uncollectedPledges — USD
• percentToCharity
• campaignReport — campaign label (e.g. All Campaigns, Telemarketing)
• sourceUrl
• recordType: "penniesForCharityReport", scrapedAt

Input

Field	Type	Default	Description
mode	string (select)	registrySearch	registrySearch / transactionSearch / penniesForCharity
orgName	string	–	Organization name, partial match (modes: registrySearch, transactionSearch). If mode=registrySearch and every filter is left empty, falls back to a demo name (red cross)
orgId	string	–	Registration number NN-NN-NN (mode=registrySearch)
ein	string	–	EIN digits (mode=registrySearch)
regType	string (select)	–	CLT / CRT / Estates / NFP (mode=registrySearch)
city	string	–	Registered city (mode=registrySearch)
state	string (select)	–	Registered state (mode=registrySearch)
oagNumber	string	–	OAG case number (mode=transactionSearch)
transactionType	string (select)	–	Dissolution / NPCL 510/511 (mode=transactionSearch)
approvalDateFrom / approvalDateTo	string (date)	–	ISO date range (mode=transactionSearch)
pfcOrgName	string	–	Organization name, partial match (mode=penniesForCharity)
pfcFundraiserName	string	–	Fundraiser name, partial match (mode=penniesForCharity)
pfcFilingYear	string	–	4-digit year (mode=penniesForCharity)
pfcGeoArea	string (select)	–	New York region 1–7 (mode=penniesForCharity)
maxItems	integer	20	Hard cap on emitted records (1–300)

At least one filter field must be supplied per mode. orgName and pfcFilingYear show an example value in the input form for convenience, but leaving them blank does not silently narrow your search — omit them entirely to search by your other filters alone (e.g. state + regType with no orgName).

Example: registry search by organization name

{
  "mode": "registrySearch",
  "orgName": "red cross",
  "maxItems": 10
}

Example: registry search by EIN

{
  "mode": "registrySearch",
  "ein": "530196605"
}

Example: dissolutions approved in a date range, for organizations matching a name

{
  "mode": "transactionSearch",
  "orgName": "foundation",
  "transactionType": "Dissolution",
  "approvalDateFrom": "2020-01-01",
  "approvalDateTo": "2020-12-31",
  "maxItems": 20
}

Example: Pennies for Charity report by filing year and region

{
  "mode": "penniesForCharity",
  "pfcFilingYear": "2024",
  "pfcGeoArea": "6",
  "maxItems": 25
}

Use cases

• Donor due diligence — verify a charity's registration status, EIN, and address before donating
• Compliance / grants administration — confirm a grantee's Charities Bureau registration and filing history
• Fundraising oversight — analyze professional fundraiser campaigns and the percentage of funds reaching charities
• Legal / regulatory research — track charity dissolutions and asset-transfer transactions over time
• Nonprofit sector analysis — build regional or category-level datasets of registered New York charities

FAQ

What is the data source? The actor calls the public JSON API behind charities-search.ag.ny.gov, operated by the New York State Office of the Attorney General, Charities Bureau. It is not affiliated with the OAG.

Does registration in this database mean an organization is IRS tax-exempt? No. Registration with the Charities Bureau is separate from federal tax-exempt status, which is determined by the IRS. The Bureau's own portal carries this same disclaimer.

Does penniesForCharity support partial organization/fundraiser names? Yes — pfcOrgName and pfcFundraiserName perform the same case-insensitive substring match as orgName in the other two modes (e.g. pfcOrgName: "American Cancer" matches "American Cancer Society Inc"). All three modes behave the same way here; this mirrors the upstream API's own matching behavior in every mode, not a limitation added by this actor.

Why do some organizations have no address, county, or website? The Charities Bureau only publishes what the organization itself filed. Trusts and estates in particular often have minimal address data on file.

How far back does Pennies for Charity data go? The Bureau's dataset generally covers fundraising campaigns from the mid-2000s onward; pre-2017 reports are limited to telemarketing campaigns, which the source itself documents.

Does this actor need a login, cookies, or proxy? No. The Charities Bureau search API is fully public. A proxy is only used automatically as a fallback if the source starts blocking direct requests.

Why does transactionSearch sometimes return 0 results even when I know a match exists? The Charities Bureau API applies stricter anti-scraping filtering to "browse all" transactionSearch queries that have no orgName filter (e.g. transactionType and/or a date range alone) — it silently returns an empty result (HTTP 200, no records) to automated/cloud traffic for these broad queries specifically, even after the actor's automatic proxy retry. The identical query returns full results from a residential connection. This is upstream's own restriction, not a bug in the actor. Always pair transactionType/date-range filters with orgName for reliable results; narrow organization-based lookups are unaffected.