Updated April 2026
Nonprofit Sector Trend Reports
NonprofitTruth publishes 2 trend reports drawn from IRS Form 990 financial data: 0 improvement reports, 0 decline reports, 0 aggregate sector views, and 2 point-in-time snapshots. Each report documents what changed in the public filings and which organizations are affected — without making impact claims about the underlying programs.
Latest Reports
Largest Nonprofits by Revenue
The biggest nonprofit organizations in America
Most Efficient Nonprofits
Highest percentage of spending going to programs
How We Build a Trend Report
Each report starts from a structured query against our processed Form 990 dataset. We diff the most recent filing year against the prior year for every organization in the database, flag every entity whose program ratio, reserves, growth consistency, or CEO-compensation ratio moved by more than a fixed threshold, and roll the results into category-, state-, or size-level reports.
The text of each report is generated programmatically from the underlying figures — no editorializing, no impact judgment. Where a notable swing turns up, the report names the organization and quotes the specific Form 990 fields involved (for example, total revenue, program expenses, or Schedule J compensation). Donors can then click through to the organization’s profile page to see the multi-year picture.
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.
Why a Movement May Not Mean What It Looks Like
Form 990 financials describe a single year of activity, and the nonprofit calendar is lumpy. A capital campaign can spike revenue and assets one year and reverse the next. A merger or fiscal-sponsor handoff can transfer an entire program from one EIN to another with no real change in service delivery. A shift in program-vs-overhead classification — sometimes prompted by a new auditor — can move the program ratio without anything actually changing on the ground.
That is why our trend reports stop at description. They tell you that a number moved and how much; they do not tell you whether the underlying organization is now better or worse run. Read movements as questions to investigate, not verdicts.
Source Data and Verification
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 any organization referenced in a report, you can pull the full Form 990 directly from the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search, the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, or the Candid (GuideStar) directory. Schedule O of the 990 contains the narrative explanations the organization itself gives for unusual movements, and is often the single most useful section for understanding context behind the numbers.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is in a NonprofitTruth trend report?
Each report focuses on a specific cross-section of the IRS Form 990 dataset — for example, organizations whose Efficiency Score moved more than 10 points year over year, or sector-wide changes in median program ratios. Reports list the affected entities and the specific 990 fields driving the change.
How are reports categorized?
We tag every report with one of four labels. "Decline" reports flag organizations whose financial structure shifted in ways the Efficiency Score weights negatively (a falling program ratio, shrinking reserves, or rising CEO-comp ratio). "Improvement" reports flag the opposite. "Aggregate" reports look at the entire database in one cut. "Snapshot" reports document a single point-in-time view. The current run includes 0 decline, 0 improvement, 0 aggregate, and 2 snapshot reports.
How often are trend reports updated?
Reports refresh whenever the underlying ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer feed posts new 990 data — typically a quarterly cadence, since the IRS releases bulk e-file data in batches. The data on this page was last updated in April 2026.
Do these reports judge whether a nonprofit is "good" or "bad"?
No. Each report is purely descriptive: it identifies what changed in the Form 990 numbers and explains the change in plain language. Whether a movement is meaningful depends on context donors should weigh themselves — a falling program ratio could reflect a deliberate investment in long-term capacity, and a rising one could reflect a one-time grant. Read the reports as starting points for further research, not as verdicts.
Where can I see the underlying filings?
Every entity referenced in a report links back to its profile page, which in turn links to the original Form 990 on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and on ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. You can read the full return — including Schedule J compensation detail and Schedule O narrative — at either source.
NonprofitTruth publishes 2 trend reports drawn from IRS Form 990 financial data: 0 improvement reports, 0 decline reports, 0 aggregate sector views, and 2 point-in-time snapshots. Each report documents what changed in the public filings and which organizations are affected — without making impact claims about the underlying programs.