More on the New 990

Well some of the first criticisms of the new IRS form 990 are up. I'm interested to know what you think about what the president of Charity Navigator has to say.

I have some initial thoughts on the core form. I like the summary section of part 1. It lays out the more important aspects of the form in a fairly straight forward way, what the casual reader of a 990 really will want to see. We do still need a way to educate readers on what the information means, maybe a new Peter Swords book?

Overall the form feels easier to understand and grasp. The Parts have an ordered feel to their layout, every part is a complete section. The form is longer by page count but it goes faster.

Some questions that came up during the first go through:

• Part I number 8b, what is it trying to show? What is a “good” metric? I don’t think that benchmark needs to be on the form.
• Part I number 9, if there is no other explanation a person who doesn’t understand how a NP operates numbers here may make them think the NP is doing something wrong. I don’t see a reason for listing 9 on the summary page, don’t see what it serves in the big picture.
• Part I number 15, if this is a larger number it could at first glance be a bit misleading.
• Part IV number 1f, “gifts grants,” what does that mean? Typo?
• Part V number 23, great! I like the added criteria, forces people to not be lazy.

I’ll list more as I come across them upon more in depth reading.