Many Types of Nonprofits
501(c)(3) nonprofits, which are charities like the Easter Seals, the Boys & Girls Club and, well, ProPublica, are exempt from paying most federal income tax, and donations to them are exempt from tax. There are many varieties of nonprofit organizations beyond 501(c)(3)’s, such as 501(c)(5)’s, which include labor unions, and 501(c)(4)’s, which include social welfare organizations. Each type has its own rules about things like eligibility, lobbying, electioneering and whether donations to them are tax deductible, and each is covered by a different subsection of the 501(c) section of the tax code.
| Type | Description and Purpose | Contributions Deductible? |
|---|---|---|
| 501(c)(1) | Corporations organized under acts of Congress, which includes federal credit unions, and serve as instrumentalities of the United States | Yes |
| 501(c)(2) | Corporations created to hold titles for property owned by another nonprofit | No |
| 501(c)(3) | Organizations for any of the following purposes: religious, educational, charitable, scientific, literary, testing for public safety, fostering national or international amateur sports competition (as long as it doesn’t provide athletic facilities or equipment), or the prevention of cruelty to children or animals | Yes |
| 501(c)(4) | Civic leagues, social welfare organizations and local associations of employees, created to promote community welfare for charitable, educational or recreational purposes | No |
| 501(c)(5) | Labor, agricultural and horticultural organizations that are educational or instructive, including unions, created for the purpose of improving conditions of work, and products of efficiency | No |
| 501(c)(6) | Business leagues, chambers of commerce, real estate boards, etc, created for the improvement of business conditions | No |
| 501(c)(7) | Social and recreational clubs | No |
| 501(c)(8) | Fraternal beneficiary societies and associations, which provide payment of life, sickness, accident or other benefits to members | Yes |
| 501(c)(9) | Voluntary employees beneficiary associations, which provide payment of life, sickness, accident or other benefits to members | No |
| 501(c)(10) | Domestic fraternal societies and associations, which devote its net earnings to charitable, fraternal and other specified purposes, but NOT to provide life, sickness, or accident benefits to its members | Yes |
| 501(c)(11) | Teachers' retirement fund associations | No |
| 501(c)(12) | Benevolent life insurance associations, irrigation companies, telephone companies, etc., which have a mutually beneficial nature | No |
| 501(c)(13) | Cemetery companies | Yes |
| 501(c)(14) | State-chartered credit unions and mutual reserve funds | No |
| 501(c)(15) | Mutual insurance companies or associations which provide insurance to members substantially at cost | No |
| 501(c)(16) | Cooperative organizations to finance crop operations, also in conjunction with activities of marketing or purchasing associations | No |
| 501(c)(17) | Supplemental unemployment benefit trusts | No |
| 501(c)(18) | Employee funded pension trusts created before June 25, 1959 | No |
| 501(c)(19) | Post or organization of past or present members of the armed forces | No |
| 501(c)(21) | Black lung benefit trusts, funded by coal mine operators to satisfy their liability for disability or death due to black lung diseases | No |
| 501(c)(22) | Withdrawal liability payment funds, which providing funds to meet the liability of employers withdrawing from a multiemployer pension fund | No |
| 501(c)(23) | Veterans' organizations created before 1880, to provide insurance and other benefits to veterans | No |
| 501(c)(25) | Title holding corporations or trusts with multiple parent corporations, which holds titles and paying over income from property to 35 or fewer parents or beneficiaries | No |
| 501(c)(26) | State-sponsored organizations providing health coverage for high-risk individuals | No |
| 501(c)(27) | State-sponsored workers' compensation reinsurance organizations | No |
| 501(c)(28) | National railroad retirement investment trust, which manages and invests the assets of the Railroad Retirement Account | No |
| 501(c)(29) | Qualified health insurance issuer that has received a loan or grant under the CO-OP program | No |
| 4947(a)(1) | Non-exempt charitable trusts | No |
About This Data
Nonprofit Explorer includes summary data for nonprofit tax returns and full Form 990 documents, in both PDF and digital formats.
The summary data contains information processed by the IRS during the 2012-2019 calendar years; this generally consists of filings for the 2011-2018 fiscal years, but may include older records. This data release includes only a subset of what can be found in the full Form 990s.
In addition to the raw summary data, we link to PDFs and digital copies of full Form 990 documents wherever possible. This consists of separate releases by the IRS of Form 990 documents processed by the agency, which we update regularly.
We also link to copies of audits nonprofit organizations that spent $750,000 or more in Federal grant money in a single fiscal year since 2016. These audits are copied from the Federal Audit Clearinghouse.