Today I’m celebrating! I am celebrating our 50,000 (and growing) strong community of nonprofits and foundations at GuideStar. These organizations have added information to their GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles and have earned a Bronze, Silver, Gold or Platinum GuideStar Seal of Transparency.

If you’ve ever applied for a grant, you know there’s a lot of paperwork involved. There’s a reason for that: for each new grant awarded and every payment processed, administrative and financial staff must carefully consider pertinent laws, IRS requirements, and the changing landscape of the nonprofit sector, all while protecting the funds their respective founders set aside for philanthropy. 

We’ve made it even easier to find current information on nonprofit organizations. Just look for a 2018 Seal of Transparency on GuideStar.

Our GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles now feature 2018 Seals—signaling that nonprofits have provided current contact information, fresh financials, recent results, and more. Find a 2018 Seal in the left-hand side of a Nonprofit Profile and you can rest easy knowing that you are viewing up-to-date information.

Yesterday, we looked at the growth in donations made through the GuideStar website in 2017. Today we’re examining the impact having a GuideStar Seal of Transparency and mission had on these gifts.

South Korea isn’t the only place with people competing for Gold (or Platinum!). We are excited to announce the first-ever Nonprofit Winter Games, where we will be giving away more than $2,000 in donations.

February 5–March 2, we're hosting our own games for the sector. Entering for a chance to win up to $500 is as easy as posting to your organization's favorite social media channel or updating your Nonprofit Profile.

For part 3 of this series, we’ll be discussing one of the most important tools you’ll need to update your organization’s Nonprofit Profile on GuideStar—a level (to balance your nonprofit’s checkbook).

Your GuideStar Nonprofit Profile is your funding résumé. So what can you do to get it in front of funders, donors, and other key decision makers? We already covered a few helpful tools in Part 1 of this series. Here’s a quick summary in case you missed it:

Tool #1: a hammer—to hammer out the basics ...

Many factors stand between nonprofits and potential donors and supporters. As the premiere hub for information on nonprofit organizations, we’re doing something about that. We’ve given our GuideStar Nonprofit Profiles a refresh and made improvements to the data we collect.

GuideStar’s database has information on 1,684,038 active nonprofits. Recently, we added new information to the profiles of 46 of these organizations: the fact that they had been designated as hate groups by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC). That action has earned us both celebration and criticism. So I wanted to take a moment to share the thinking behind our choice to add this new data source.

This month we’re celebrating the one-year anniversary of our Platinum Seal of Transparency. Platinum is GuideStar’s highest level of recognition and an opportunity for nonprofits to share their progress in a meaningful way.