Career Research Tip: GuideStar for Targeting Nonprofits

If you are considering working in a nonprofit, GuideStar will help identify lists of target organizations based on geography, organizational focus, and size of firm.  Of note, the data from the 990 will often include the compensation of key employees, which can provide insight for salary negotiation.GuideStar  helps answer the question “How are nonprofits spending their money?” It provides financial and organizational data for over 1.8M IRS recognized U.S. nonprofits, community foundations, and faith-based organizations.  You may search by criteria including  location, employee size, and type of 990 filed.Financial data included in GuideStar’s reports cover revenue and expense data for the current year, balance sheet data for up to five years, annual reports for all years, funding sources (such as contributions, program service revenue, fundraising, etc.) and expenditures for contractors.Organizational data in GuideStar covers demographics including gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and disability for board members, senior staff, full time staff and part time staff, as well as compensation for key employees.GuideStar allows searches to be exported in Excel, just register using your emory.edu email. There is a limit of 1000 downloads per user per month.

For research tips, use this cheat sheet: GuideStar: Creating Your Custom Search
See our previous career research tips: