A User-friendly Tutorial on IRS 990s
One of the panel discussions in which I participated at the first annual Network for Public Education (NPE) conference was on investigative journalism. I chose to use my twelve minutes to only touch the surface on using IRS 990s (the tax forms for nonprofit organizations) as a research tool.
In this post, I would like to continue my tutorial. The information I include here I learned by my own wits and through the suggestions of others. My purpose is to assist those who wish to utilize information from tax forms in order to support their arguments in fighting corporate reform.
This will be one dry read– but a useful read for those seeking to improve their knowledge of nonprofit tax form navigation.
The Nonprofit Tax Form Search Engine
First of all, let me introduce a wonderful search engine for locating those nonprofit 990s:
One can search any term, including organization names and even names of individuals. I suggest putting quotation marks around search terms so that the search results include the exact term.
Sometimes the search engine boots out “404-not found” or a page noting “0 results.” If I am sure the org or person exists, I refresh the search and often get a result.
The search results include both the 990s for the organization itself and also a list of other orgs that connect to the search term.
Keep in mind that the common name of an organization might not be the formal name used on the tax forms. For example, “American Federation of Teachers” (AFT) is