DOI: 10.3886/e100386v1
title: United Way Grantmaking

description: These United Way grantmaking datasets
provide data from administrative reports (UW and grant recipient 990 reports).
The data includes grants made by local UW affilates as reported on the 990
report, grants received by recipient organizations, and the basic
organizational characteristics of the UW affiliates and their recipient
organizations. Data is separated into two files. The first contains information
on local UW affiliates. The second contains data on grant recipients. The files
are linked by the UW id. The datasets include four years of data: 2000, 2004,
2008 and 2010. Data was collected between 2011 and 2013.
description: These
datasets provide data on grants made by local United Way (UW) affiliates
(2000-2010) to recipient organizations. Data were collected from the 990 reports
of local UW affiliates.  The research
team collected data between from 2011to 2013. The research
team identified the population of U.S. based UWs from the United Way Worldwide
website and the core files of NCCS. Using the IRS 990 tax report of each UW
affiliate for four years (2000, 2004, 2008, and 2010), that are publicly
available from the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), we
recorded the name of agencies receiving a grant from each local United Way (UW)
affiliate and the amount of each award. If a UW agency did not report grants
made in a particular year, we then collected data from the immediately
following year, if the allocation data was available. For example, if
allocation data were not available for 2000, we collected data from 2001. In
any given year, 12% of the active UWs failed to report their allocation data. A
number of 990 reports in a given year may not include allocations for two
reasons. First, the UW may have filed a 990 report but not reported their allocations.
Reporting was generally less consistent prior to the 2008 IRS reporting
requirement changes. Alternatively, a UW may have failed to file a 990 report
in a particular year. In general, non-reporting has declined over time. In
2000, 105 UWs did not report allocations. In 2004, 67 UWs did not report
allocations. In 2008, 143 UWs did not report allocations. In 2010, only 29 UWs
did not report allocations.<br>The data sets
differentiate between allocations made by UW affiliates and designations made
by donors, and only allocations are included in the allocation data set.  All dollar values are nominal values, not
adjusted for inflation.  Dataset_1_UW
contains information on UWs. The unit of analysis is the local UW affiliate. Dataset_2_AllocationRecipients
contains data on organizations that received an allocation from a local UW
affiliate (NOTE: This data set does not include those organizations that
received only a designation or the amount of designations received).  The unit of analysis is an allocation from a UW to a specific
organization. Using the EIN of those recipient organizations for which we were
able to identify an EIN (either through the UW 990 report or through a later
web based search), we merged the allocation data with the National Center for
Charitable Statistics (NCCS) core files to provide basic organizational and
financial characteristics of recipient organizations. <br>
description: Local United Way affiliates reporting allocation data on their 990 report to the IRS.