Are there statistics about nonprofits online?

Summary:

The National Center for Charitable Statistics offers quite a lot of statistical information at its website and provides access to detailed 990 data for researchers who pay small fees. There are other sources as well.

The National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS)is located at the Urban Institute in Washington, DC. The website with general information is http://nccs.urban.org.

NCCS and Guidestar (http://www.guidestar.org) cooperate to make the information from Form 990 more readily accessible.

Guidestar's website is useful for getting details about any organization that files a Form 990. (For information about the Form 990, see http://www.nonprofits.org/npofaq/19/06.html.)

NCCS provides some summary statistics on its website through http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/faq/index.php?category=44 Some tables are already prepared and available by from the menu. National and state-by-state tallies of income, assets, and a few other key variables, including details by county and by NTEE (purpose) codes for several time periods are also easy to constuct using the "Table Wizard."

The NCCS page has links to other sources of statistical information about nonprofits as well.

NCCS makes the same information available in a form that is useful to researchers. The large datasets of detailed 990 reports can be accessed (for a fee) to permit detailed analysis and exploration of research questions.

The Johns Hopkins Comparative Nonprofit Sector Project offers a quick overview of its findings in 26 countries: http://www.jhu.edu/~cnp/pdf/glance.pdf