DOI: 10.3886/icpsr35635
title: National Center for Charitable Statistics IRS Form 990 Filings
title: Archival Version

description: 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 Core Files (Core), produced annually since 1989, combine descriptive information from the Internal Revenue Service's (IRS) Business Master File (BMF) and financial variables from the IRS Return Transaction Files (RTF) after they have been cleaned by NCCS. Only organizations required to file Form 990 are included in the files. Separate Core files are available for public charities (called the NCCS Core PC file), private foundations (called NCCS Core PF), and organizations under subsections other than 501(c)(3) (called NCCS Core 501(c) others). The NCCS-GuideStar National Nonprofit Research Database (NNRD or "digitized data") is a cumulative listing of public charities filing Form 990 and Form 990-EZ from FY 1998 to FY 2003. As with the NCCS Core files, only organizations required to file with the IRS are included. Unlike the Core files, the data are maintained in a series of cumulative files, one for each major section of the form. The 1992 IRS Form 990 Parts 3 and 8 Supplement, transcribed from Form 990 by NCCS, contains descriptions of the program service accomplishments and income-producing activities of more than 100,000 501(c)(3) public charity organizations and 20,000 501(c)(4) organizations. Trend Analysis Files have been created to assist in longitudinal studies. The Core Trend Files (one for public charities, another for private foundations, with a third planned for "other exempt organizations") combine a small number of variables from every Core file for every year into a single long, narrow file with one record for each unique EIN-Core File Year combination. Data Dictionaries for these files are available on the NCCS website.
description: These data are not available from NADAC. Users should consult the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) Web site for details on obtaining the data and other resources. NADAC is distributing the "Guide to Using NCCS Data" other documentation such as the IRS 990 forms and information about NCCS data. 
The NCCS DataWeb site contains a menu-driven report creation tool that allows users to create their own summary statistics from any of the above datasets. Interested researchers who want to create more sophisticated reports can use the Custom Report Builder, also found on the NCCS DataWeb site. In addition, organization-level NCCS data is available, for a fee, for download for direct manipulation and analysis.
The NCCS Web site also lists a Unified Database of Arts Organizations. The Unified Database of Arts Organizations (UDAO) is a master list of commercial, nonprofit, and governmental organizations with arts programs. Some are entirely arts-oriented, while others may primarily focus outside the arts despite having at least one arts program. The UDAO can be linked to other parts of the NCCS data system.
The National Center for Charitable Statistics was established in 1982 and has been a project of the Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy (CNP) at the Urban Institute since July 1996, when it was transferred from the research division of INDEPENDENT SECTOR.
description: Nonprofit organizations in the United States