Form 990
The annual information return that tax-exempt organizations file with the IRS to report their finances, governance, and activities.
Form 990 is a term from U.S. nonprofit financial reporting — typically a line item or schedule on IRS Form 990, the annual disclosure tax-exempt organizations file. The definition here is the IRS-file usage, which can differ from how the term is used in general financial writing or accounting standards. On the LakeQuality nonprofit efficiency rubric, Form 990 feeds into one of the four scoring factors (program ratio, revenue growth, reserves, or CEO compensation). Understanding how the term is computed at IRS is part of reading nonprofit pages defensibly.
Each nonprofit page on the site surfaces the specific Form 990 value for that organization (when Form 990 reports one), so the general definition here translates into a concrete data point on the per-nonprofit pages you actually use.
Form 990 is the cornerstone of nonprofit transparency in the United States. Every tax-exempt organization with gross receipts above $200,000 or total assets above $500,000 must file a full Form 990 annually with the Internal Revenue Service. Smaller organizations may file the simplified 990-EZ or the electronic 990-N postcard. The form requires detailed disclosure of revenue sources, functional expenses broken down by program, management, and fundraising categories, officer and key employee compensation, governance policies, and related-party transactions. Part I provides a summary snapshot, while Parts VII through IX contain the most donor-relevant data: compensation schedules, revenue breakdowns, and functional expense allocations. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer makes these filings publicly searchable. For donors, Form 990 is the single most reliable source of financial information about a charity because the data is self-reported under penalty of perjury and independently verified through the IRS review process. NonprofitTruth uses Form 990 data as the foundation for every Efficiency Score calculation.