How Clarifi fits with free 990 lookups
and your own books

Form 990s are public, and strong free tools already make them easy to find and read. Your finance team also keeps books that are more detailed than any filing. Here is what each does well, and the different job Clarifi does.

Public resources

Free 990 lookups

The nonprofit sector is lucky to have strong public resources for Form 990 data. Each of these does something well.

ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer

Free, fast search across millions of returns, with summary figures, officer pay, the filing documents, and an email when a new filing arrives.

Candid (GuideStar)

The nonprofit profile many funders look at, Seals of Transparency, and funder and compensation research. Its paid plans add financial trends, peer benchmarking, and an annual compensation report of statewide pay ranges by job category.

NCCS at the Urban Institute

Open, research-ready 990 datasets for the data scientists among you who have the time to dig in, plus the NTEE classification definitions and statistics on the nonprofit sector.

GivingTuesday Data Commons

Open 990 data prepared for researchers, so they can study the sector at scale.

Charity Navigator

Encompass ratings, shown as stars, that help donors give with confidence.

What Clarifi adds

One organization, many years. Clarifi reads a single organization's filings, older scanned returns included, so you see its record as one continuous history: up to 25 years on the Pro and Board plans (Free shows the latest year, Watch five). How far back it goes varies by organization.
Your peers, many years. Clarifi finds organizations like yours and tracks each measure beside them across many filing years, not against a fixed rule of thumb.
Peer groups that hold up. 41.4% of nonprofits carry no NTEE code, the IRS category most peer lists start from. Clarifi classifies each organization itself and augments its filings with validated, publicly reported information.
Traceable figures. Every reported figure traces back to the IRS filing it came from. Calculated figures show their formula.

Inside your organization

Your own books

For this month and this year, your books are the right source. They are monthly, more detailed and more current than any 990, and Clarifi does not replace them.

Clarifi helps you look more strategically: across many years, and across your sector.

What your books show

Where you stand this month. The month-end close, cash on hand, and budget against actual.
Detail no filing carries. Results by program, grant, fund and department.
What is ahead. Forecasts, pledges and commitments that no filing shows yet.

What your books can't show, and Clarifi can

The outside view. Your 990 is the record funders, journalists and board candidates read. Clarifi lets you read that record the way they will.
Where you are heading. A 990 is due about five months after its year ends, and many organizations extend to about eleven, so it is not a reading of this month. It shows direction: days of cash going 180 → 145 → 120 across three filings is worth a board conversation.
Where your sector is heading. Your books show your own revenue and reserves. Clarifi shows whether organizations like yours are growing or drawing down theirs, across many filing years.
Your peers. Your books know your organization well. They can't tell you which organizations are like yours, or what those organizations report.
How you compare. Your CFO can compute days of cash; the books can't say how that compares with similar organizations, because that takes everyone else's filings.
Pay in context. Your books show what you pay your chief executive. Clarifi shows what similar organizations report paying theirs, year by year.

See what Clarifi reads from a filing

Every reported figure traces back to the IRS filing it came from.

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