GuideStar

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unref=September 2008
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GuideStar, [http://www.guidestar.org www.guidestar.org] , is the leading source of information about U.S. nonprofits. It connects people and organizations with information on the programs and finances of more than 1.7 million IRS-recognized nonprofits. No other resource matches the depth and breadth of information that GuideStar provides about these organizations.

GuideStar serves a wide audience inside and outside the nonprofit sector, including individual donors, nonprofit leaders, grantmakers, government officials, academic researchers, and the media. GuideStar was founded in Williamsburg, Virginia, in September 1994 and received tax-exempt status in 1996.

Mission

GuideStar seeks "to revolutionize philanthropy and nonprofit practice by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving." Before GuideStar, there was no central source of information on U.S. nonprofits. Donors had no way to verify the information charities gave them, to evaluate the progress of the nonprofits they supported, or even to confirm that the organizations asking them for money were legitimate. As one of GuideStar’s founding employees says, “Before GuideStar, giving to charity was like trying to buy a stock without a stock exchange.”

Soon after GuideStar opened its doors, its leaders learned that the need for accurate, up-to-date nonprofit information was even more widespread than they had realized. Nonprofits and their boards needed data to benchmark their activities and results against those of similar organizations. Many also needed the means to reach out a broader audience as the size of the nonprofit sector (and thus competition for donors’ dollars) increased. Grantmakers required information to evaluate nonprofits seeking grants. Government decision makers needed data on which to base grantmaking, contract decisions, and enforcement efforts. Journalists needed an independent source of information about the nonprofits they were covering and about the nonprofit sector in general. Today, GuideStar provides valuable information to all of these audiences.

GuideStar is a neutral source of nonprofit information; GuideStar’s staff does not rate or rank the organizations in its database. GuideStar’s philosophy is that all philanthropy reflects the donor’s values—whether the donor is an individual, a charitable foundation, or corporate giving program. GuideStar also believes that the best measure of a nonprofit’s effectiveness is whether the organization accomplishes its mission, and that evaluation systems that rely solely on financial data are misleading and even harmful. GuideStar therefore provides the data and tools its users need to evaluate nonprofits according to their personal criteria and a platform through which nonprofits can reach out to GuideStar’s millions of users.

GuideStar Facts

* Organizations in the database: 1.7 million
* Nonprofits voluntarily providing information beyond their IRS listings:
* Total Form 990 images in the database at the end of 2007: 3.7 million
* Visits to www.guidestar.org in 2007: 10.8 million
* Total registrants at the end of 2007: 1.2 million
* GuideStar is a 501(c)(3) public charity.
* Year Founded: 1994

Programs

GuideStar operates the following programs:

* Data Digitization: Entering most of the data from IRS Forms 990 filed by tax-exempt organizations with revenues exceeding $1 million.
* Database Management/Development: Building and operating state-of-the-art database and data access technologies. These systems allow the addition of an unlimited number of nonprofits and information fields as well as the construction of new value-added services for data users.
* Nonprofit Services: Reaching out to and assisting tens of thousands of nonprofit organizations, large and small, that provide information about their work directly into the GuideStar database.
* Web Site Operations: Developing and operating GuideStar's free public Web service.
* Research: Analyzing information in the GuideStar database to produce increasingly helpful reports about the finances and practices of individual and groups of nonprofits and working with other researchers to advance better understanding of nonprofit practice and public policy formation.
* GuideStar Services: Providing GuideStar data to specialized users, such as nonprofit associations, foundations, government agencies, and researchers.
* Administration/Fundraising/Communications: Managing the organizational infrastructure to sustain GuideStar's operating programs.

External links

* [http://www.guidestar.org/about/index.jsp?source=dnabout GuideStar] , official site