How We Research

The IPS Charity Data Lab is a proprietary database of nonprofit tax return information built by the IPS Charity Reform Initiative to inform our public policy advocacy. 

The Lab provides access to a large set of publicly-available tax information for all types of charitable organizations including private foundations, community foundations, donor-advised fund sponsors, and working charities. 

Organizations Included

The Lab includes all electronically-filed tax returns from 2017 to the present for 501(c)(3) charitable organizations such as:

• Private foundations
• Community foundations
• Donor-advised fund (DAF) sponsors
• Working charities (e.g. nonprofit colleges and universities, museums, hospitals)

All qualified charitable organizations must file an annual Form 990 tax return (or, in the case of private foundations, a Form 990PF). The IRS makes all of these returns available to the public, and all returns that have been filed electronically are available for download on the IRS website. 

For tax years up through 2020, roughly 65 percent of all small and mid-size private foundations file electronically and are included in the Lab data set. (This includes any charitable organization with total assets of $10 million or more or that filed more than 250 tax returns in a single year—including W2 returns for its employees—which were mandated to file electronically even before 2020.) 

New IRS requirements required almost all 990 and 990PF tax returns to be filed electronically starting with tax years ending July 31, 2020. This change means that the Lab includes essentially all 990 and 990PF returns for tax year 2021 and beyond. 

Note that it can sometimes take more than a year for charities to file their returns, including extensions.

How We’ve Used Data

A sampling of the information we have used from the Lab includes:

• Estimates of implementing DAF payout requirements for our policy brief Fixing What’s Broken with Donor-Advised Funds
• Foundation assets, distributions, and payout ratios for family foundations for Silver Spoon Oligarchs, our report on dynastic family wealth
• DAF grant amounts and recipients for our brief on granting between commercial DAFs
• Foundation grant amounts and recipients for our brief on grants from private foundations to commercial DAFs
• DAF assets, contributions, and grants for our brief on community foundation dependence on DAFs

Specific Financial Information Available

The type of information available in the Lab includes, but is not limited to:

Technical Structure

The Lab system uses custom-built Python scripts to download electronically-filed charitable 990 tax returns from the Internal Revenue Service and bundle them into unified JSON data files for analysis. The scripts make use of an open source application called IRSx to do the actual downloading of files from the IRS.

Latest News

Time to Move the Money: Independent Research on Donor Advised Funds

Breaking analysis of nonprofit tax return information processed by our Charity Data Lab.

Long-Term Solutions

The rules governing philanthropy should be overhauled to maximize the public good. Proposed reforms include:

• Levy a wealth tax on closely held private foundation assets, and establish a lifetime cap on charitable deductions.
• Make private foundation payout requirements meaningful and increase the flow of funds to working charities. Eliminate the perpetual private foundation as it is currently constituted.
• Require donor-advised funds to have a minimum annual payout and increase transparency and reporting.
• Implement a universal giving credit to broaden giving by the non-wealthy.
• Prevent abuses and encourage transparency with reforms requiring board independence, banning compensation of family members, and requiring donor disclosures.
• Create a new federal oversight agency for foundations and charities, funded by foundation excise taxes.

More Resources