GuideStar’s database has information on 1,684,038 active nonprofits. Recently, we added new information to the profiles of 46 of these organizations: the fact that they had been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). That action has earned us both celebration and criticism. So I wanted to take a moment to share the thinking behind our choice to add this new data source.

We see our role in the nonprofit sector as being a hub of information about nonprofit organizations. GuideStar has more than 3 billion pieces of data, much of it from the Forms  990 that nonprofits file with the IRS. Many profiles also include additional information: data shared directly with GuideStar by 138,000 nonprofits, more than 300,000 reviews, analysis from 3,000 experts, and more.

Our task is to take this diversity of sources to offer a multi-dimensional view of nonprofits. That means GuideStar profiles present a mixture of irrefutable facts and people’s opinions. Sometimes, a single profile contains contradictory information. For example, we share stakeholder reviews of nonprofits through our partnership with GreatNonprofits. Most of these reviews are positive, but, as of June 14, 2017, we are sharing 17,086 negative reviews.

We also have built tools to let nonprofits tell their own stories—in their own terms—with text, photos, video, and quantitative metrics. None of these data sources is perfect. Even the seemingly objective financial data in the Form 990 is subject to significant accounting discretion.

Read the source article at GuideStar Blog