ProPublica’s “Nonprofit Explorer Adds Powerful Tools to Help You Research Organizations’ Financials”
From ProPublica:
ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer already allows users to thoroughly research charities, and now we’re adding more features to help you understand the financial health of organizations. Starting Monday, you can search for organizations that have reported a significant theft, as well as those that have had auditors flag serious financial issues.
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With this update, you can search for all 33,400 organizations that filed audits with the federal government because they spent more than $750,000 in federal funds in a given fiscal year.
We’ve also made it possible to easily scan findings where auditors raised a variety of concerns, the most serious being a “going concern” flag; that is, the possibility that the organization won’t be able to meet its financial obligations in the near future. This may signal that the organization’s expenses have outstripped its revenue, or it may indicate other issues, like risky investments or financial mismanagement.
There are other findings you can search for as well, like “material noncompliance,” “material weakness in internal controls” and “significant deficiency in internal controls” — all of which are findings that donors or researchers may want to investigate further. Findings from the organization’s most recent audit will also appear as flags on an organization’s page to make them easy to find.
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Filed under: Associations and Organizations, News, Patrons and Users
About Gary Price
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area. He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit. Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com.