Speakers: Nick Hart
Nick Hart: I'm Nick Hart, president of the Data Foundation, and my role leading a nonprofit organization, I rely heavily on IRS Form 990 data. These are tax documents that every nonprofit in the United States that's registered with the IRS files publicly, and it's a treasure trove of information that helps us understand the entire nonprofit landscape. We use it to benchmark our operations against other organizations. It also ensures we're offering competitive compensation while being responsible stewards of the resources that we actually have. So this data is crucial for third party charity evaluators who provide ratings, and our donors rely on these ratings when deciding which organizations to support. This data is critical for our success.
Nick Hart: Recently, the Data Foundation leveraged Form 990 data based on analysis that were conducted by third-party researchers. So this allowed us to conduct an analysis of compensation for our staff and then compare across the entire nonprofit sector by type of position, and we did this for our senior roles. We focused on organizations similar to ours in size, mission, location, and other factors that were important to us. This analysis directly supports our staff by ensuring our compensation structures fair and competitive. It powers us to make data-driven adjustments when we need to, and it hopefully gives our team confidence that they're valued and appropriately valued within the market. Having access to this public data from the IRS transforms our potentially subjective process into one that's actually grounded and transparent objective benchmarks. That makes this data essential for our success.
Nick Hart: If IRS form 990 data disappeared tomorrow, nonprofit transparency would be severely compromised. Organizations like ours would lose a really important tool for benchmarking operations. It'd be harder to ensure we're competitive while being good stewards of resources. Donors might have significantly less information about how nonprofits use their contributions. This could potentially reduce charitable giving due to decreased trust. The entire nonprofit sector would become less accountable. This could weaken the vital role these organizations play in addressing community needs. Losing access to IRS form 990 data that is currently publicly accessible would ultimately undermine our ability to advance important causes effectively. This data really matters for our success.
Nick Hart: This is my data story, one of many. Share yours today.
