IRS 990 Nonprofit Financials MCP Server

IRS 990 Nonprofit Financials

Annual financial filings for US tax-exempt organizations. Two complementary backends:

1. IRS SOI extracts (primary) — bulk financial data the IRS publishes once a year, covering ~1.1M filings across two tax years and three form variants. Indexed locally for fast search by name, EIN, state, revenue, or form type.
2. ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer API (secondary) — covers 1.8M+ organizations historically with filing-level detail (object_id-addressed). Useful when an organization is in the IRS Master File but has no recent SOI extract row.

Free, no authentication required.

Data Sources

Form variants

Always read form_type on a result before comparing fields across orgs — the same column name often means different things across variants.

Capabilities

• Search SOI filings — by organization name (fuzzy), EIN, state, minimum revenue, or form variant. Returns financial summary rows.
• Get filing detail by EIN — full revenue breakdown (program revenue, contributions, investment income), expense detail (officer compensation, salaries), balance sheet (assets, liabilities, net assets), and headcount. Optional tax_period (YYYYMM) narrows to a specific year; otherwise returns all available filings.
• Top-compensated officers — find nonprofits ranked by officer/director compensation. Optional state and minimum-revenue filters. Returns compensation amounts plus compensation-to-revenue ratio.
• Dataset statistics — total filings, unique organizations, form-type breakdown, revenue aggregates, tax periods covered, freshness.
• ProPublica organization lookup — by EIN for full org detail (including legacy filings outside the SOI extract window) or by query/state/ntee_code for browse. NTEE major groups: 1=Arts, 2=Education, 3=Environment, 4=Health, 5=Human Services, 6=International, 7=Public Benefit, 8=Religion, 9=Mutual Benefit, 10=Unknown.
• ProPublica filing detail — single 990 filing addressed by EIN + object_id (the filing's unique ID, found in the org's filings_with_data array from the org lookup).

EIN format

EIN is a 9-digit IRS identifier, accepted with or without the dash: 131837418 and 13-1837418 are equivalent. Always canonicalize to digits-only when comparing.

Workflows

Charity / grantee due diligence: Search SOI by name → confirm the right org by state and EIN → pull filing detail by EIN for last 2–3 tax periods → review revenue trend, expense ratio (program vs. management vs. fundraising), and reserve assets.

Compensation benchmarking: Run the top-compensated query with a state and revenue floor to anchor the peer set → compare ratios, not just raw dollars (a $1M salary is very different at a $10M org vs. a $1B org).

Cross-period trend for one org: Get filing detail by EIN with no tax_period to receive all available years; then compare revenue, total assets, and officer compensation across years.

Historical lookup outside the SOI window: If SOI search returns nothing, try the ProPublica organization lookup by EIN — it carries older filings. Use filings_with_data[].object_id from that response as the filing_id for the per-filing detail call.

Discover orgs by mission area: Use ProPublica organization search with an ntee_code (and optional state/query) when the user describes a category (e.g. environmental orgs in CA) rather than a specific name.

Gotchas

• Self-reported data — the IRS does not audit field values; figures are as reported by the org. Restated prior years occasionally appear.
• Tax period ≠ calendar year — tax_period=202312 means "fiscal year ending Dec 2023". Many large nonprofits have fiscal years ending June or September.
• 990-PF schemas differ substantially from 990 / 990-EZ — most general "revenue" comparisons should exclude private foundations or treat them separately.
• Officer compensation is reported on Schedule J for Form 990 filers above a threshold; smaller orgs may report only highest-paid officer with no detail.
• EO BMF presence does not imply current activity — a row in the master file means the IRS recognized exempt status at some point; the org may be defunct, revoked, or non-filing. Cross-check with a recent SOI filing.