Grantmakers Funding GuideStar
GuideStar empowers people and organizations by connecting them with valuable information to use in their daily activities and decision making. As a mission-driven organization serving the entire nonprofit sector, we want to offer many of our services at little or no charge to users. We can't achieve this goal without the support of grantmakers who believe in our programs. Please consider supporting our work and in turn supporting the entire nonprofit sector.
Current GuideStar Programs
GuideStar seeks to expand and maintain our database of nonprofit information, ensuring continued public access to this reliable source of accurate information, through the following programs:
- GuideStar Membership Program
The GuideStar Membership Program offers foundations and corporations the opportunity to support a valuable resource that makes their work easier and more efficient-GuideStar. Participating in the GuideStar Membership Program demonstrates your belief in GuideStar's efforts to revolutionize philanthropy and nonprofit practice with information.
- Nonprofit Information Expansion
GuideStar conducts outreach to nonprofits, encouraging them to provide first-hand information to GuideStar users about their missions, programs, goals, results, and more. This process enables nonprofits to market themselves to the public at no cost via the GuideStar Web site.
- Information Access
The GuideStar database provides scanned images of Forms 990, the annual information form that exempt organizations file with the IRS. With documents dated as early as 1998, GuideStar currently offers access to more than 2 million PDF images, providing in-depth financial and program information on 501(c)(3) nonprofits. This summer, we will begin receiving scans for other types of exempt organizations from the IRS as well.
- Data Digitization
GuideStar captures data from hundreds of thousands of IRS Forms 990 every year, totaling more than 100 million hand-keyed values annually. Data Digitization allows GuideStar to provide powerful search and manipulation tools to access information faster and more easily. GuideStar ensures data accuracy by entering every numerical value twice, reconciling any disparity between entered values before the data are displayed on the site. GuideStar also operates a Data Quality Team to confirm data accuracy manually.
If you are a foundation or corporate-giving program representative and would like to learn more about these opportunities to support GuideStar, please contact us at 1-800-421-8656, or e-mail funding@guidestar.org.