Sources

Most of our data is drawn from nonprofits’ tax returns, government press releases, federal spending databases and funder reports.

We extract location from mailing addresses, which means that some places – particularly suburbs near city centers – might not show as much nonprofit activity. (They often use the city name in their addresses.)

Although we list more than 1,000 communities across Upstate, we do not provide info about every hamlet, town, village and city. We include only those with sufficient grant and nonprofit activity.

A special thanks to Pro Publica, which publishes nonprofit tax returns, called 990s, on a free, public site.

Another important source of information is the Charities Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s Office. We have also incorporated information from foundation web sites, the Internal Revenue Service, the National Science Foundation, USASpending.gov, the New York State Education Department, and the New York Office of Information Technology Services.

We continue to update our listings as more 990s become available.

Note: Many of the grants from community foundations and nonprofits related to financial institutions, such as Fidelity Investments and Goldman Sachs, come from donor-advised funds. While Fidelity, Goldman Sachs and other philanthropic funds file tax returns listing these grants, they (unfortunately) do not have to name the original donors. Donor-advised funds do not have to file separate tax returns, making their gifting much less transparent than it is for foundations.