About DoubleNine Analytics.
Built on a million Form 990 filings. Built for the people who have to defend a number to a board.
DoubleNine Analytics helps nonprofit boards and executives answer a simple question: is our compensation reasonable? We process over one million IRS Form 990 filings to provide transparent, data-driven benchmarks — no expensive consultants required.
Data source
All compensation data comes from electronically filed IRS Form 990 returns. Form 990 Part VII requires tax-exempt organizations to report compensation for their officers, directors, trustees, key employees, and highest-compensated employees.
Electronic filings are publicly available through the IRS and are sourced from the GivingTuesday Data Commons, which maintains a public archive of IRS Form 990 XML filings. Electronic filing covers approximately 60–65% of all Form 990 filers. Organizations with gross receipts above $200,000 or total assets above $500,000 are required to file the full Form 990; smaller organizations file Form 990-EZ, which is also included in our dataset where Part VII compensation data is present.
Coverage
The DoubleNine database currently includes 1,007,436 compensation benchmarking records across 160,062 mission-driven nonprofit organizations, covering tax years 2021 through 2024. Our full dataset spans 385,971 total organizations across all 50 states, Washington D.C., and U.S. territories.
Title standardization
IRS Form 990 contains free-text title fields, which means the same role can appear hundreds of different ways. Position titles are standardized into canonical categories using a multi-method classification system informed by academic research from the Nonprofit Open Data Collective.
Position categories
Peer selection
When generating a compensation benchmark, DoubleNine identifies peer organizations using a distance-ranking algorithm across three dimensions:
- •Budget size — Organizations with similar annual operating budgets, weighted most heavily in the ranking
- •Sector — Organizations in the same or closely related NTEE category
- •Geography — Organizations in the same state, same census region, or nationwide — in that priority order
When your exact filters return fewer than 15 peers, DoubleNine automatically supplements with the closest comparable organizations by distance rank. Each peer in your report is labeled as either a direct peer (exact filter match) or a closest comparable (nearest neighbor), so you always know the basis for each comparison.
IRS compliance context
This tool supports the comparability review process described in IRS Form 990 Part VI, Line 15 and Treasury Regulation § 53.4958-6(a). The rebuttable presumption of reasonableness requires compensation decisions to be approved by an independent body using appropriate comparability data. DoubleNine Analytics provides one source of such data but should be used alongside other compensation studies and professional guidance.
Data quality — why we filter
Not every organization that files a Form 990 is a typical nonprofit. The IRS dataset includes law firms, accounting partnerships, insurance companies, hospital systems, universities, and private foundations — all of which have fundamentally different compensation dynamics than a mission-driven charity.
DoubleNine classifies every organization into one of eight categories using a combination of name analysis, NTEE codes, and revenue patterns. By default, our benchmarks show only operating nonprofits — the organizations your board is actually comparing against. You can toggle this filter off on the benchmark tool to see the full dataset.
Organization categories
Included by default — charities, social services, arts orgs, youth programs
Law firms, CPA firms, consulting partnerships filing for benefit plans
Large hospital systems and medical centers
Large universities and college systems
Grantmaking foundations, family foundations
Credit unions, insurance companies, mutual benefit orgs
Industry groups, professional associations, chambers of commerce
Quasi-governmental entities, power cooperatives, authorities
Limitations
- •Organization classification is rule-based and may occasionally miscategorize an org. The filter can be toggled off on the benchmark tool to see all 990 filers.
- •Only includes electronically filed returns (~60–65% of filers). Organizations that file on paper are not represented.
- •Data reflects filed fiscal years, typically with a 1–2 year lag from the current date.
- •Title standardization is automated and may occasionally misclassify ambiguous titles.
- •Compensation figures reflect amounts reported on Form 990 Part VII: base compensation, bonus, and other compensation from the organization and related organizations. This includes compensation paid by related organizations, which may be higher than what the filing organization pays directly.
- •Does not include benefits, deferred compensation, or non-reportable perquisites.
- •Benchmarks are most reliable when a sufficient number of peer organizations are available. Results based on fewer than 10 comparisons should be interpreted with caution.
Acknowledgments
DoubleNine Analytics builds on open-source research and data standards developed by the Nonprofit Open Data Collective (NODC), a community of researchers and practitioners working to make nonprofit data more accessible and useful.
Raw filing data is sourced from the GivingTuesday Data Commons, which maintains a public archive of IRS Form 990 electronic filings.