Research Resource #2- National Center for Charitable Statistics

If you feel like competition has increased in generating revenue from gifts and grants, you are absolutely right. Each year more non-profits are formed and consequently potential donors are receiving an increasing number of gift solicitations from a broadening array of institutions.

For example, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the number of non-profits increased from 1,084,939 in 1996 to 1,478,194 in 2006, and that doesn’t include a vast number of small nonprofits and religious entities that do not have to file with the IRS.

According to its website, “the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) is the national repository of data on the nonprofit sector in the United States. Its mission is to develop and disseminate high quality data on nonprofit organizations and their activities for use in research on the relationships between the nonprofit sector, government, the commercial sector, and the broader civil society.

Working closely with the IRS and other government agencies, private sector service organizations, and the scholarly community, NCCS builds compatible national, state, and regional databases and develops uniform standards for reporting on the activities of charitable organizations.”

The NCCS website contains a wealth of information to help us understand the changing landscape that non-profits are facing. It even breaks down statistical information by state.

If you would like to find out more, just click on the title to this post.