During the busiest charitable giving season of the year, donors may wonder if the nonprofits they are considering donating to will be good stewards of their money.
ProPublica nonprofit researcher already allows users to thoroughly research charities, and now we’re adding more features to help you understand the financial health of organizations. Starting Monday, you can look for organizations that have reported significant theft, as well as those where auditors have found serious financial problems.
While tax forms are the main documents we post on Nonprofit Explorer, we have also added audits available since 2017. Federal and state regulatory agencies use them to gain a more detailed view of an organization’s financial management and governance, including information on financial controls and compliance with government grant programs.
With this update, you can search all 33,400 organizations that have filed an audit with the federal government because they spent more than $750,000 in federal funds in a given fiscal year.
We’ve also made it easy to scan the findings in which auditors raised various issues, the most serious of which was the “enterprise activity” flag; that is, the probability that the organization will not be able to meet its financial obligations in the near future. This may indicate that the organization’s expenses exceed its revenues, or it may indicate other problems, such as risky investments or financial abuse.
There are other findings you might also look for, such as “material noncompliance,” “material weakness in internal control,” and “significant internal control deficiency,” all of which are findings donors or researchers may want to investigate further. The results of the organization’s most recent audit will also appear as checkboxes on the organization’s page for easy retrieval.
Our search also now includes the option to view organizations that have reported significant asset diversion on their most recent tax return. This is a rare but serious issue where an organization has detected an unauthorized diversion of either 5% of the organization’s assets or $250,000, whichever is less.
To search for any organization that meets these criteria without knowing its name, simply click the search button without filling in the text and you can view the entire set of non-profit organizations. You can use the tools on the right side of the screen and click the Apply button to filter.
We have many ideas for future improvements and additions to Nonprofit Explorer. If you have feedback on these improvements or features you’d like to see on the site, please do contact! We look forward to hearing from you.
And as always, if you use Nonprofit Explorer and value the information it provides, please do consider donating. Support from people like you allows us to keep updating and improving this app!
