News Release

For Immediate Release


Contact:

Giving USA Foundation: Sharon Bond, 847/375-4836, sbond@connect2amc.com

Urban Institute: Stu Kantor, 202/261-5283, skantor@ui.urban.org      


Giving USA FoundationTM, National Center for Charitable Statistics to release updated giving data

Rare opportunity to incorporate new data into Giving USA reports


Glenview, Ill. and Washington, D.C. (Dec. 15, 2006) – Giving USA FoundationTM and the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics today announced that newly examined data about nonprofits will allow both groups to publish updated information on charitable giving in the United States. The data, which have been prepared by NCCS using IRS Forms 990, will be available for the first time in a consistent series covering 1989 through 2004. This opportunity will allow both organizations to present more information to the philanthropic community and the general public than has been possible previously.


“We are delighted to benefit from the meticulous work done by NCCS in this endeavor,” said Giving USA Foundation Chair Richard T. Jolly. “Giving USA is the pre-eminent source book on giving data in the United States, and whenever valid new information is available, we are pleased to incorporate it into our report.”


Added NCCS Program Director Tom Pollak, “We have a responsibility to provide the most accurate and thorough analysis possible to nonprofit leaders, national and state policymakers, donors, and interested laypeople. Now with this new compilation of IRS trend data, we will be able to study an exceptionally broad range of nonprofit organizations over an extended period.”


The NCCS will release summary information for selected years in its forthcoming Nonprofit Almanac. Next June, Giving USA Foundation will release Giving USA 2007, which will incorporate the entire series of data prepared by the NCCS into the long-running Giving USA estimates of giving by type of recipient organization.


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The Foundation, headquartered in Glenview, Ill., annually publishes the fact book Giving USA. Widely read by researchers, development directors, financial planners and others in the nonprofit community, it is known as the key source of information about giving by source and by recipient. It has been published annually for more than 50 years. Giving USA Foundation is the research arm of Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits.


NCCS published the most recent almanac in 2002, using a wide variety of sources including data from IRS Form 990s filed by charities with revenues of more than $25,000. Selected data from these Form 990s historically have been available to researchers for analysis one or two years after the 990s were filed. With the lag time in availability, Giving USA researchers have not previously been able to use these data in their annual tabulations. With the exception of religious congregations, which do not file Form 990s, the NCCS databases capture all but a small percentage of the revenues and contributions received by more than 300,000 public charities, 75,000 private foundations and 120,000 other types of nonprofit organizations.


Giving USA, which is researched and written at the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University, uses surveys and statistically-validated estimating methods to come up with its annual giving projections. These methods, which have been tested and reviewed over the decades, include a survey of a sample of American nonprofits annually to estimate giving by type of recipient.


Additionally, Giving USA estimates the amount contributed by four types of donors. Estimates from the donor side of giving (Individuals, Bequests, Foundations and Corporations) are revised annually as new data become available. This data agreement with NCCS marks the first major revision to the data about type of recipient since the late 1980s (when environment and international affairs began to be treated as separate and distinct types of recipients).

In the coming months, NCCS will work with representatives from research institutions in a joint task force to look at the survey results from Giving USA and the data from the IRS Forms 990 to determine the giving patterns over time in the nine subsectors Giving USA reports on each year: Religion, Education, Health, Public-Society Benefit, Human Services, International Affairs, the Environment/Animals, Foundations and Arts, Culture and Humanities.


This task force will decide what revisions, if any, should be made to the time-series data Giving USA publishes that go back 40 years.


Additionally, the task force will:



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Any revisions that may be made to prior year totals will be published in the 2007 edition of Giving USA. The NCCS’ Nonprofit Almanac will be published by the Urban Institute Press.


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The National Center for Charitable Statistics, a project of the Urban Institute’s Center on Nonprofits and Philanthropy, 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 among the nonprofit sector, government, the commercial sector, and the broader civil society. For more information, go to http://nccs.urban.org.


Giving USA FoundationTM is the research arm of Giving Institute: Leading Consultants to Non-Profits. Its mission is to advance the cause of philanthropy through education and research. It was founded in 1985 by the former American Association of Fundraising Counsel. More information on the Glenview, Ill.-based Foundation is available at www.givingusa.org.