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~*A short metaltxt guide to looking at nonprofit tax forms to get an idea of if they're legit*~
Nonprofits have to file an IRS form 990 5 months and 15 days after the end of their fiscal year (so May 15 for orgs on a calendar year). This shows the PREVIOUS year's $$ info. Propublica has an amazing search to find these here: https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/search
Some info on the top of the form: A - Sometimes orgs do business under a totally different name than what they're registered with the IRS as. This can be useful to look at to see if an org suddenly starts doing business under a new name if they rebrand or had bad PR.
B - If you are donating to an org they should be giving you the EIN or "tax number" for your tax records. If you can't find an org's 990 but they give you an EIN you can look this up to see what org it belongs to. Sometimes orgs have a fiscal sponsor that do the money/accounting
C - If you're giving to a nonprofit, you probably want it to be a 501(c)(3). This is a charitable organization and you could deduct gifts to it on your taxes. Another common one is 501(c)(4) - these are typically for political spending.
Some organizations will have an "Action Fund" that is supposed to be totally separated from the (c)(3). 501(c)(3)s can spend only a percentage of their money on lobbying/political stuff and can only spend that on legislation, NOT candidates. Gifts to these ARE NOT tax deductible
The next section is very very useful. It shows you: A - Total numbers. "Voting members of the governing body" is board members. Ideally you want line 3 and 4 to be the same number. This means board members aren't getting paid. Also shows you total employees and volunteers
B - shows you operating income/expenses for the previous/current reporting years. If contributions/grants are DRAMATICALLY different... you need to do more research to see why. Look at earlier 990s and see if it's a downward or upward pattern.
B - line 15 shows you salaries and benefits for employees. This will probably be pretty high if they aren't an all volunteer org because guess what - employees are expensive and a lot of the times are DOING THE WORK. There's a further section later down that details this more
B - line 16 "Professional fundraising fees" is incredibly misleading. This basically means they're paying FOR-PROFIT fundraising orgs. BAD. NO. If you see a number in this line other than zero you should probably run for the hills or contact the org and ask wtf this is.
Part IV is mostly self-explanatory DID ORG DO BAD THING? You want most of these to say NO. Stuff like did you get a gift from a tax shelter? If they do say Yes to these, there's usually another Schedule form they have to fill out that says what that is - also linked on propublica
Part VII is the next REALLY useful page. This shows you the compensation of "key employees" and directors. Ideally an org doesn't compensate their board of directors - it should be a volunteer thing. You should be able to see what the executives make here and if it's crazy high.
Part IX gives you more of a breakdown on expenses. Looking at salaries can be interesting here - if all the money is in Management/Fundraising... they either have program volunteers. Fine. Or... they might have a bloated management/development department.
At the very bottom of that page is JOINT COSTS, typically used a catchall we don't want to classify this. This is typically where shady organizations will hide expenses. If you see a big ass number here under fundraising DO NOT give this org money.
Okay that got way too long. But that's a good list of things to check. If anybody has specific questions DM me, I have.... way too much experience with this shit.
