About this record

Every nonprofit above a small size files an annual financial return with the IRS, and the IRS publishes those returns as public records. This site computes each organization's operating record from those filings and presents it in plain language. Nothing here is rated, ranked, or scored — the record shows each organization's own reported numbers and links to the filings they came from.

The measures

Money in / money out / result — total revenue, total expenses, and their difference, as reported.
Reserve months — net assets divided by average monthly spending: roughly how long the organization could operate at its current pace on what it holds. Net assets count everything beyond debts — buildings and donor-restricted funds included, not just cash — so this measures cushion, not liquidity.
Staffing share — salaries, wages, and officer compensation as a share of total spending (full-form filers only). It excludes benefits and payroll taxes, so true personnel cost runs higher.
Donor-restricted assets — money donors gave for a stated purpose, reported separately (full-form filers only).

Limits, stated plainly

The IRS releases this data years after the fact: the newest year varies by organization; each record states its own — most run one to two years behind the current date. Years refer to the calendar year in which the organization's fiscal year ended. Organizations under $50,000 in receipts file the 990-N postcard, which carries no financial detail — they appear here only as name-only records, and only when you switch on "include name-only organizations" (off by default). Short-form (990-EZ) filers report less detail than full-form filers. Private foundations file a different form (990-PF) and are not yet included. A single year is weather; the multi-year line is climate.

Corrections

If a figure does not match the source filing it links to, write to lighthouse_actual@proton.me and it will be fixed. If your organization's filing itself contains an error, the correction path is an amended filing with the IRS — this record follows the filings.

How we count

We count days, not people. If a record says it was opened on 12 separate days, that means 12 days on which at least one person opened it — one person or two hundred, we cannot tell, so we do not claim to. Refreshing the page adds nothing: a record can add at most one day per day.

We store the date a record was opened and nothing else — no address, no browser fingerprint, no identifier of any kind. There is nothing here that could be traced back to a reader. We do not count our own visits while we build and check the site, and anyone can stop their own visits being counted. The count is updated once a day and does not include today.

Two things this number is not. It is not a measure of how many people read a record, because a day read by five hundred people and a day read by one look identical. And it undercounts real use: readers who take the bulk data or follow a feed are never counted at all, because those carry no page to count.