Your Form 990 is the public record of your organization. You didn’t write a word of it.
Here is what it tells the world: what you took in, what you spent, and what you paid people. Nothing about who you served. Nothing about the program that worked. Nothing about the thirty years you’ve been doing this. Nothing about your legacy giving program, or whether you even have one.
It’s a compliance form. It was written for a regulator, by someone billing you hourly, in a format built to satisfy the tax code, not to explain a mission. And it sits on the open internet as the official public account of your work.
So when someone looks you up, they don’t see your work. They see a spreadsheet, and the most legible thing on it is a person’s name next to a dollar amount.
Every nonprofit that files has this problem. Almost none of them have done anything about it.
Who Is Actually Reading It
Not your $50 donor. The people who move real money.
Major donors sizing you up before a first serious gift. Foundations before a grant. Estate attorneys and financial advisors before they put your name in a client’s will. Journalists. Board candidates. And the organization competing with you for the same estate.
They’re not reading your annual report. They’re reading the filing, because it’s free, it’s public, and it’s already indexed.
Nearly a million people come to Philanthropy.org each month to do exactly that. Roughly a quarter of them are donors.
Claim Your Profile. Write The Other Half.
Claiming is free, and it stays free. We don’t charge anyone to be seen accurately.
When you claim, you take control of everything the filing leaves out. Your mission in your words. Your outcomes. Your leadership. Your photos. Your gift officer’s name and phone number, sitting directly beneath the financials a serious donor just finished reading.
The filing stays exactly as filed. What changes is that it’s no longer the whole story.
One Line You’ll Want To Fill In
Every claimed profile carries a Legacy Giving field. Fill it in and estate attorneys, advisors, and donors writing wills know exactly who to call. It also tells everyone reading that you expect to be here in a hundred years.
Leave it empty and your profile publishes the words: No legacy giving program listed.
Blank is a decision. It just isn’t usually a deliberate one.
Claiming is free and always will be. Optional paid enhancements are available. You control everything you add to your profile.
Philanthropy.org is an independent publisher of nonprofit financial data. We are not affiliated with or endorsed by the Internal Revenue Service. Financial data is drawn from public IRS filings.
