Nonprofits in Boston, Massachusetts

Boston, Massachusetts has a substantial nonprofit footprint on NonprofitTruth, with 31 organizations whose IRS Form 990 lists this city as the principal office. Combined revenue from Boston-headquartered nonprofits exceeds $10 billion, putting it in the top tier of U.S. nonprofit cities. The largest single category by revenue is Health.

Boston, Massachusetts is home to 31 of the nonprofits we track. City pages aggregate organizations whose IRS Form 990 lists this city as the principal office — local affiliates of national networks may also operate here without appearing in this list.

The 31 Boston nonprofits in this view together report $23.6B in combined annual revenue on their most recent IRS Form 990 filings. Median revenue is $120.9M, and the simple average is $760.6M — a gap that reflects the long-tail distribution typical of the nonprofit sector, where a handful of large organizations account for most aggregate dollars.

Across the 31 Boston nonprofits we track, 7 earn an A and 21 earn a B on the Efficiency Score (combined 90% in the top two tiers, with A-grade organizations alone at 23%). Another 3 land at C, 0 at D, and 0 at F — a combined 0% in the bottom two tiers based on program ratio, reserves, growth consistency, and CEO-comp ratio drawn from each organization's most recent Form 990.

Executive compensation detail is reported on Schedule J of the Form 990 and is not always present for every organization in this list — particularly the smaller filers using Form 990-EZ.

City-level pages aggregate organizations whose principal office is in Boston. That includes locally founded charities, regional affiliates that file independently, and national organizations whose headquarters happen to sit here. Reading any one organization’s 990 starts with Part I (summary), then Part VIII (revenue), Part IX (functional expenses, where the program ratio comes from), and Part VII / Schedule J (compensation).

The NonprofitTruth Efficiency Score is a 0–100 composite that summarizes four signals from the Form 990: program-spending ratio (50% of the score), revenue-growth consistency over multiple years (20%), months of fund reserves on the balance sheet (20%), and CEO compensation as a share of revenue (10%). The grade A–F mapping is purely descriptive — it summarizes the financial structure that the 990 reveals, not the social impact, program quality, or outcomes of the work the organization does. Donors evaluating impact should pair these financial signals with program-level evaluations from sources like Charity Navigator, GiveWell, or the organization's own audited reports.

Many smaller Boston organizations file the abbreviated Form 990-EZ. The EZ form does not require the same level of compensation detail as the full 990, so the CEO-pay column may be blank for some entries even when the organization has paid leadership.

All financials on this page come from each organization's IRS Form 990 — the federal information return that 501(c)(3) public charities, private foundations, and most other tax-exempt organizations must file annually. The Form 990 is a public document. We ingest it primarily through the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer feed, which mirrors the IRS Tax-Exempt Organization Search dataset. Original e-file XML and PDF copies of any return can be looked up directly at the IRS, ProPublica, or the Candid (formerly GuideStar) directory.

For every Boston organization listed above, the underlying Form 990 is available free of charge from the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, or the Candid (GuideStar) directory.