Nonprofit Formation Radar: New 501(c)(3) Prospect Alerts

Nonprofit Formation Radar turns the public IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File into a monthly new-501(c)(3) prospecting feed. Name the state(s), IRS subsection (default 501(c)(3)), and NTEE mission codes you care about, put the actor on a monthly Apify Schedule, and each run delivers only the organizations newly recognized in your territory and mission since you enrolled, as deduplicated prospect rows (EIN, name, mailing address, NTEE mission, ruling month, foundation type), never re-showing one you have already seen. It also produces a one-shot new-determination cohort report for a chosen state, period, and mission. It runs inside your own Apify account, so you get API access, scheduling, integrations, and monitoring built in, with nothing to log into and no key to manage. It is MCP-ready for AI agents.

Address-only prospect list (read this first)

The IRS Business Master File carries each organization's name and mailing address but NOT a phone number or email address. So this actor delivers a mission-and-geo-targeted prospect list, not a contact list: it tells you which nonprofits were just recognized in your territory and mission, with a mailing address to reach them, and it earns its value on targeting quality (correct mission, correct geography, freshly recognized, never a repeat), not on already having a way to reach them. If you need a phone number or email address for an organization, you source that separately.

What does Nonprofit Formation Radar do?

When the IRS grants an IRS determination letter recognizing a new exempt organization, a brand-new nonprofit exists that within its first months needs banking, bookkeeping and 990 preparation, directors-and-officers and general-liability insurance, a donor CRM, and grant-readiness help. The IRS publishes every recognized organization in its Business Master File and refreshes it monthly, but sends no alert: no "notify me when a new 501(c)(3) is recognized in my state working in youth services." Other 990 and nonprofit actors on the store search the existing universe of nonprofits; this one delivers the monthly stream of newly-recognized ones, which is the signal behind nonprofit formation monitoring.

You define a filter once and every scheduled run:

1. Streams the four IRS regional extracts (eo1.csv through eo4.csv) on your schedule.
2. Keeps only rows matching your subsection, active recognition status, state(s), and NTEE mission whose RULING (determination) month is on or after the month you enrolled.
3. Diffs them against your filter's memory on EIN and delivers one prospect row per newly-recognized organization, plus an optional webhook POST.

Two modes carry the value:

• watch (the recurring feed): the standing monthly filter above. The first run seeds a baseline of what is already on file (uncharged) and watches forward, so you never get a wall of back-catalog.
• report (one-off): every organization recognized in a chosen state, subsection, mission, and period, as a cohort you can paste into a territory review. This is the forwardable artifact and the deterministic demo.

Why use Nonprofit Formation Radar?

• Reach new nonprofits early. See an organization the month the IRS publishes its recognition, so new nonprofit leads reach you while founders are often still choosing vendors.
• Mission and geo targeting. Filter by state and by NTEE mission (a single letter like P = Human Services or E = Health Care matches a whole major group; a longer prefix like B82 narrows), so the list stays narrow, not a national dump.
• Deduplicated and forward-looking. You see each organization once, from the day you start watching, never a repeat and never old back-catalog.
• Verifiable. Every row carries a per-EIN ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer link so you can confirm any record against a public source.
• Built for nonprofit-serving vendors. Donor-CRM implementation partners, nonprofit D&O insurance brokers, nonprofit-specialized CPA and bookkeeping firms, and mission-focused banks can use it for nonprofit prospecting: a targeting layer for donor CRM leads and nonprofit insurance leads built on the fresh-determination signal.

How to use Nonprofit Formation Radar

1. Open the Input tab. Pick your States, your IRS subsection (default 501(c)(3)), and optional NTEE mission codes.
2. Set a Filter name (for example tx-humanservices-health) so the deduplication memory persists across your scheduled runs.
3. Set the run's max total charge (see Pricing). The $9 watch fee lands on a single run, so set the per-run max total charge to at least $9 plus any expected overage. If it is too low the run fails closed: it delivers nothing, advances no memory, and writes a single uncharged billing-blocked row telling you to raise the cap and rerun.
4. Run it once. The first run establishes a baseline and charges nothing; it watches forward from that month.
5. Put it on a monthly Schedule. The IRS refreshes the extract monthly, so a monthly schedule keeps pace with the source.
6. Each later run delivers only the organizations newly recognized since your last run.

Worked example (watch mode)

Input (also the store default):

{ "mode": "watch", "states": ["TX"], "subsection": "03", "nteeCodes": ["P", "E"], "filterName": "tx-humanservices-health" }

This watches Texas 501(c)(3) organizations in Human Services (NTEE P) and Health Care (NTEE E). The values in the rows below are illustrative of the row shape, not a live pull.

The first run returns a single uncharged baseline row and watches forward:

{ "event_type": "baseline", "filterName": "tx-humanservices-health", "billing": "uncharged",
  "note": "Baseline established: 312 in-window organization(s) on file for this filter; watching forward from today. No back-catalog was charged." }

A later run, once new organizations are recognized, returns one prospect row each (the first 500 per filter-month bill at the $0.00001 platform minimum, half a cent per 500 rows):

{ "event_type": "new-org", "ein": "993312047", "name": "LONE STAR YOUTH REFUGE",
  "ico": null, "street": "4210 MEDICAL PKWY", "city": "AUSTIN", "state": "TX", "zip": "78756",
  "subsection": "501(c)(3)", "ntee_cd": "P30", "ntee_label": "Human Services",
  "ruling": "2026-05", "foundation_type": "Publicly supported organization 170(b)(1)(A)(vi)",
  "deductibility": "Contributions are deductible", "classification": "1700",
  "source_url": "https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/993312047",
  "checked_at": "2026-06-03T09:00:00.000Z", "filterName": "tx-humanservices-health",
  "billing": "included-tier", "note": null }

A month with no new organization returns an uncharged digest-no-new row, so you always get a run receipt.

Report mode and the demo cohort

Report mode produces a one-shot new-determination cohort. This public demo input is deterministic (the same inputs return the same rows):

{ "mode": "report", "states": ["TX"], "subsection": "03", "nteeCodes": ["P"], "period": "2026-05" }

It returns every Texas 501(c)(3) Human-Services organization whose IRS determination (RULING) month is May 2026 as flat prospect rows, plus a one-line cohort summary written to the run's OUTPUT (the total, a tally by NTEE major group, and a tally by state). period accepts a single YYYY-MM or an inclusive YYYY-MM..YYYY-MM range.

Demo dataset

The public demo dataset is at https://api.apify.com/v2/datasets/7mduUnF1ehII8S6af/items?format=json&clean=true. It was generated by a live report-mode run using the Texas 501(c)(3) Human Services input above and contains 76 real prospect rows. Each row shows EIN, organization name, mailing address, subsection, NTEE mission, ruling month, foundation type, deductibility, source URL, billing marker, and checked timestamp.

Output data

Every prospect row is flat JSON keyed on EIN, mapped straight from the IRS Business Master File with no enrichment:

Field	Meaning
ein	Employer Identification Number (also the dedupe key).
name, ico	Organization name and in-care-of name.
street, city, state, zip	Mailing address (address-only; see the note above).
subsection	Decoded IRS subsection label (for example 501(c)(3)).
ntee_cd, ntee_label	NTEE mission code and its decoded major-group label (for example Human Services).
ruling	The IRS determination month, normalized to YYYY-MM.
foundation_type, deductibility, classification	Decoded IRS foundation type, deductibility status, and raw classification code.
source_url	Per-EIN ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer link to re-verify the record.
checked_at, filterName	When the run checked, and which saved filter produced the row.
event_type	new-org for a prospect; baseline, digest-no-new, truncation-marker, billing-blocked, or unwatched for the uncharged status rows.
billing	How the row was billed (included-tier, volume-tier, cohort-report, dry-run, or uncharged).

Status rows (baseline, digest-no-new, truncation-marker, billing-blocked, unwatched) carry null payload columns and an explanatory note. You can download the dataset in JSON, CSV, Excel, or HTML.

Pricing

This actor is pay-per-event. Actor start is free.

• Filter watch-month, $9.00 per named filter per calendar month, charged once on the first run of the month that completes a successful stream over a fresh feed. Your account's first delivering month is free: the free month is the first month that actually delivers new organizations, so the waived month is a real delivery and not an empty baseline (prospect rows still bill during it). A baseline or re-baseline run is never charged, and the fee is deferred while the feed is stale.
• New-organization prospect, $0.00001 each for the first 500 delivered per filter-month (the Apify platform-minimum event price, half a cent per 500 rows, on top of the watch fee), then $0.02 each beyond the 500th (the volume tier). Each row is pushed before it is charged.
• Cohort report, $15.00 per successfully produced report; a stale feed or a failed run charges nothing.

How big is a month (per-state math). A mission-narrowed filter (one or two NTEE groups in one state) typically stays inside the 500 included tier, so it costs about $9 per month. A broad all-mission state filter can exceed it: measured 2026-07-06, a full all-mission month is roughly 1,178 new 501(c)(3) in California, 994 in Texas, 756 in Florida (nationally about 10,390 per month). Rows past the 500 included tier bill at $0.02 each, so a broad all-mission state month costs roughly $9 plus overage, at the default caps at most about $19 before the monthly ceiling switches to uncharged notice rows. To stay inside the $9 included tier, narrow with NTEE mission codes.

Two monthly guards, so a broad filter cannot surprise-bill you. maxAlertRowsPerMonth (default 1000) caps delivered prospects per filter-month, and maxMonthlySpendUsd (default 40) caps cumulative volume-tier charges; whichever trips first switches the run to uncharged notice rows. Anything withheld is not billed until delivered and redelivers next month.

Set your per-run max total charge. Because the $9 watch fee lands on a single run, set that run's max total charge to at least $9 plus expected overage (budget about $19 for a broad all-mission state). If the cap is too low the run fails closed: it delivers nothing, advances no filter memory, and writes one uncharged billing-blocked row telling you to raise the cap and rerun. Raise the cap and the next run delivers that month's prospects.

Cadence and latency, stated plainly

The IRS refreshes the Business Master File on a monthly cadence, and what counts as new is the RULING (determination) month, not a day. So the honest latency is the IRS monthly refresh after recognition, not same-week: you see a new organization in the run after the IRS publishes the month that carries its determination. Schedule the actor monthly to match the source.

Baseline-forward behavior

Alerts begin the month you start watching a filter. The first run seeds the organizations already on file (uncharged) and watches forward, so you are never billed for the historical back-catalog. If you widen a saved filter under the same name (add states or missions), the actor re-baselines it, again with no back-catalog charge. For the recent back-catalog, use report mode.

Limitations

• Address-only. See the address-only note at the top: the deliverable is a prospect list built on mailing address, and the report earns its price on targeting quality.
• Monthly, not real-time. The source moves monthly by determination month, so this is a coverage-and-freshness feed, not an intraday alert.
• US federal recognition only. It reads the federal IRS extract, so it covers organizations the IRS has recognized; state-level charity registrations are a different record and are not included.
• Single public source. The actor reads one federal dataset. If the IRS pauses, truncates, or changes the extract, a freshness canary detects it and the run delivers nothing (and does not charge the watch fee) rather than shipping a partial or stale product.

FAQ, disclaimer, and support

• Where does the data come from? The IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File Extract (irs.gov/pub/irs-soi), a public federal record refreshed monthly. The actor reads it with no login and no key.
• Is this legal and compliant? The rows are public IRS exempt-organization records, and the actor redistributes public determination facts. It is registry information, not advice. You are responsible for ensuring your outreach complies with the rules that apply to you (for example fundraising, solicitation, and marketing regulations in your jurisdiction).
• Can I preview before I schedule? Yes. Set dryRun: true to stream, filter, and diff and return up to 5 preview rows tagged billing: "dry-run". It charges no PPE event and writes no saved filter, billing, or event-history state, but the preview rows are still written to your dataset and OUTPUT, and the run still downloads and streams the full extract (about 343 MB, 327 MiB; measured at 342,745,263 bytes), so ordinary Apify platform compute, storage, and egress usage still applies.
• What if the IRS download is very slow or stalls? The run holds a network time budget sized to finish before the platform run timeout. If the IRS download is severely slow or repeatedly stalls, the run stops fetching before that timeout and delivers the standard uncharged stale digest (nothing delivered, the watch fee is not charged, the next monthly run retries) instead of ending in a timeout. Ordinary Apify platform usage still applies to whatever time was spent before it stopped.
• AI agents and MCP. The actor exposes its modes (watch, report, unwatch, list-events) through Apify's MCP integration, so an agent can enroll a filter and pull new determinations directly.
• Request a change. Use the Issues tab to report a problem or request a state, mission, or field.