I had a real eye-opener the other day when I downloaded the Exempt Organization Master File from the Internal Revenue Service (and yes I’m sure many of you are starting to yawn at this point). Actually, I’ve been looking for long time for a definitive answer to the question “Just how many nonprofit organizations are ther in Lorain County?“
The foundation uses Guidestar, IRS Publication 78, and the Ohio Secretary of State Business Database on a regular basis to verify the non-profit and tax exempt status of our grant seekers and I’ve been purplexed that there hasn’t been an easy way to aggregate the data. The foundation has a pretty good mailing list, as do the other foundations, United Way, etc., but again there hasn’t been an easy way to determine the size of the sector is in Lorain County. We’ve been forced to guess at the answer to this seemingly simple question. Our guess was about 300.
Lo and behold, the solution was mentioned by a luncheon speaker at the Ohio Grantmakers Forum Annual Meeting and I immediately downloaded the file from the IRS website upon my return. The data had to be massaged and typos adjusted, but finally I had a definitive source (at least in terms of who the IRS thinks is in existence and functioning).
Drum roll please…
As of 10/17/07 the IRS recognized 1,239 tax exempt organizations located in Lorain County.
Of those 786 have a 501(c)(3) status
Breaking down the numbers further:
171 are listed as churches, schools or hospitals
36 are supporting organizations
41 are private foundations
235 are charities that rely on fees and receipts for a majority of their income, and
303 are public charities that rely on public support.
I was struck by a couple of aspects of these findings. First, there are a lot of people doing good work to improve the quality of life and quality of place in our community. And second, in terms of public charities - our guessing was pretty much on target.
