Homework: Comparing 990 Datapoints across several organizations
Create a spreadsheet that compares datapoints from five non-profits across a single year.
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In your
padjo-2016folder, create a new spreadsheet named990-compare. -
Create a word document named
990-analysisthat consists of a few paragraphs of interesting things you found, e.g. “It was interesting to see that the Harvard Crimson’s drop in advertising revenue was less steep than the Yale Daily News”
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The
990-comparespreadsheet should have 5 rows, one for each nonprofit -
Besides a column for name and the “Employer Identification Number”, tt should have 6 columns, indicating 6 numerical data points that you have extracted for each non-profit, e.g. number of employees, current year contributions and grants, salary of chief executive officer.
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Create two columns that are derivations of the 6 columns you’ve manually data-entered. It can be simple as a ratio, such as net revenue divided by total revenue.
Read the following stories:
- 'Worst' charity for veterans run by VA employee
- America's 50 worst charities rake in nearly $1 billion for corporate fundraisers
- And skim through some of the related stories in the Worst Charities project:
The reporters behind the "Worst Charities" helpfully provide an annotated 990 to show the things they look at for red flags, e.g. the amount spent on professional fundraising. Use it as a guide just to see what kind of things you can learn overall from a 990, regardless if you're looking for financial problems.