GuideStar's Mission
To revolutionize philanthropy by providing information that advances transparency, enables users to make better decisions, and encourages charitable giving.
If you care about nonprofits and the work they do, then you're affected by what GuideStar does. At GuideStar they gather and disseminate information about every single IRS-registered nonprofit organization. They provide as much information as they can about each nonprofit's mission, legitimacy, impact, reputation, finances, programs, transparency, governance, and so much more. They do that so you can take the information and make the best decisions possible.
They encourage nonprofits to share information about their organizations openly and completely. Any nonprofit in their database can update its GuideStar Nonprofit Profile—for free. They combine the information that nonprofits supply with data from several other sources.
Many people think that they are a charity evaluator or a watchdog. They aren't. Instead, they are a 501(c)(3) public charity that collects, organizes, and presents the information you want in an easy-to-understand format while remaining neutral. Providing nonprofit information to a broad audience at no cost to those users is an important part of their public service, one that they pledge to continue.
One-third of their operating revenue comes from their Foundation Membership Program, program-related grants, and contributions. The other two-thirds is made up of subscriptions and licensing fees for their services, which allow users to benchmark multiple organizations, verify charitable status, access compensation information, and interpret nonprofit financial data all on GuideStar.
Why are they so passionate about nonprofit information? Because the nonprofit sector is incredibly powerful. According to the Center for Civil Society Studies at Johns Hopkins University, more than 70 million people work and volunteer in the nonprofit sector. Nonprofit employees make up the third-largest workforce among U.S. industries, behind only retail and manufacturing, and nonprofits create total revenue of more than 1.9 trillion annually, exceeding the total GDP of Canada, Australia, Russia, or India. But nonprofits are so much more than these statistics.
Collectively, nonprofits make the world a better place. No matter what their focus, nonprofits touch almost everyone's life nearly every day.
They know that the best possible decisions are made when donors, funders, researchers, educators, professional service providers, governing agencies, and the media use the quality information that they provide. Those decisions affect their world today and will continue to affect it for generations to come. They are the search engine for nonprofit information.
