Centerpiece 990s Summary

This article emphasized the importance of IRS 990s. By providing real-world examples of how journalists used these documents, I learned that IRS 990s are a great tool in finding stories. As this article showed, IRS 990s are good starting points for investigations and are often a solid stepping stool to finding more information about a nonprofit organization.

Robert Anglen of the Arizona Republic, was able to use IRS 990s from the Don Stewart Association to reveal that the organization was giving money to its own organizations and own relatives. By reading and analyzing the information provided in the IRS 990s, Anglen was able to find other documents to help uncover more red flags and reveal the unethical and illegal inner workings of the organization.

Lewis Kamb of the Tacoma News Tribune, was able to use IRS 990s in two different investigative ways.

First, Kamb used IRS 990s to uncover conflicts of interests among Boy Scout groups and their widespread logging efforts. Secondly, he was able to uncover sharp climbs in executive pay at a local affordable housing agency, while the nonprofit organization was about to financially collapse.

Kamb was able to use IRS 990s as references when digging into other financial documents. He used the 990s to show inconsistencies in financial records and discover money that was left out or unaccounted for.

Tisha Thompson of WTTG-Washington, D.C., was able to use IRS 990 forms to look up the addresses of the charities “Planet Aid” was allegedly donating to. She discovered the charities’ addresses were all the same and were not listed as registered charities. Thompson was eventually able to link these “charities” to “Tvind” which many have labeled a cult.

This article outlined the importance of IRS 990s and the different ways these documents can be used to obtain a story and other, more thorough documents. This article explained that IRS 990s inform the public about crucial aspects of nonprofits such as compensation and expenditures and can reveal inconsistencies within an organization.