Sources

Upstate Giving relies on public sources to assemble its database.

Most grants listed here are from 2018-2019, the most recent years for which tax forms are publicly available. (An exception is the Covid-19 crisis funds established across the state in 2020.)

We link to our source documents in each grant listing. These source documents show contact information for the funder. 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.