WHERE DID 1.2 MILLION NONPROFITS GO?

What exactly IS a nonprofit?
by pam ashlund

What do you do when you experience the world through data? I may have to join A.A. (accountants anonymous). As it happens I was searching for a number this morning. I remembered that the frequently cited large number of nonprofits in the U.S. was inflated by including Hospitals. I just wanted to look up that number.

And I found it, in an article in Nonprofit Quarterly. But the numbers didn't add up. There in black & white it said there were 1.4 million nonprofits in the U.S. 299,000 of which were 501(c) 3's over $25K and 545,000 were non-filing under $25K. That was 845,000, NOT 1.4 million. What were the missing 568,000? Hmmmm.

Turns out they were "other nonprofits" meaning not 501 (c) 3's. 104,000 were private foundations - 501(c) 4's and the remaining 465,000 was the 501's that weren't "3's" and "4's).

As I count it then, we have 845,000 nonprofits, 545,000 of these being VERY small (under $25,000 a year, some as small as $1,000 a year). Those small nonprofits don't file tax reports, so not much is known about them statistically.

Now I was down to 299,000 nonprofits in the U.S. (the kind I usually think of as nonprofits--the human services, the charities, the arts, the education, etc. etc.)

But we're not done yet. Of the 299,000, 39,000 of them are the hospitals & health groups I was originally looking for. That leaves us with 260,000 nonprofits - not 1.4 million.

Got that? Good because there's more: Those 39,000 hospitals (only 13% of the 299,000) spend 47% of the billions of budget dollars.

Here's the data:

Type	# of nonprofits
Hospital & Health	38,633	13%	3%
Education Related	53,074	18%	4%
Social Services, Culture, all other	207,326	69%	15%
Active Filers:	299,033	100%	21%
Non-reporting (under $25K)	546,200		39%
Total 501 (c ) 3's:	845,233		60%
501 (c ) 4's - Private Foundations	103,880		7%
Other nonprofits	464,595		33%
	1,413,708		100%

Technorati Tags: 501(c)3, Nonprofit, Nonprofit Statistics