About

If you run a nonprofit in the United States, you have probably had this afternoon: you need one number, you are sure it is a simple number, and forty minutes later you have eleven tabs open and three different answers.

What the filing actually costs. Which form applies at your size. Whether the software being sold to you has a nonprofit rate, and what you have to prove to get it.

This site exists to end that particular forty minutes.

Why it exists

The information you need is scattered across IRS publications written for tax professionals, state registry pages that have not been redesigned since 2009, and a large volume of content marketing produced by companies that want to sell you a donor database.

Most of that last category is not wrong, exactly. It is just written to make one product look inevitable. When every article recommending a CRM earns a commission on the click, the recommendation stops carrying information.

So this publication does the unglamorous thing instead. It reads the primary document, writes down what it actually says, records the date, and links to the source so you can check the work.

What is here

• Starting out. Incorporation, 501(c)(3) recognition, EIN, first board.
• Running a nonprofit. Bylaws, filings, budgets, audits, board duties.
• Funding. Grants, donations, fundraising, and what each platform costs.
• Technology. CRM, accounting, and which vendors give their product to 501(c)(3)s.

Plus free tools that answer a question outright, with no email required to see the result.

How it is paid for

Not by anyone we cover. No affiliate links, no sponsored posts, no paid placement in any ranking, and no vendor sees a page before it is published. The full position is on the disclosure page, and it is the one commitment here that will not change.

Who writes it

Pages are written and edited by Faz, who has worked with nonprofits for two years and started this site as a reference for US-based organizations.

That is a short tenure for a publication covering tax and compliance, and it is worth being straightforward about. What makes a page here worth trusting is not the byline, it is that every figure is traced to a primary document you can open yourself: IRS instructions, a state registry, a vendor’s own pricing page. Every page lists what it drew on and the date it was last checked against them. Where something needs professional judgement rather than a citation, the page says so and tells you to go and get it.

Where a page covers tax, formation or compliance, it states plainly that it is reference information rather than legal advice, because that is what it is.

Getting it wrong

We will, at some point. When it happens we log the correction in public with a date and a description of what changed, rather than quietly editing the page. The corrections log is there from day one, and an empty one is not a boast, it just means the site is new.

If you find an error, tell us. It gets fixed and credited.