Nonprofit Taxonomy

Accurate, complete and up-to-date information on human rights funding and funders is vital for human rights organizations, practitioners and funders alike. For information about U.S. foundations more generally, the best resource by far is the Foundation Center. With regard to information about human rights funding specifically, however, the Foundation Center information is seriously flawed.

IHRFG has determined that the difficulty encountered by the Foundation Center in securing and providing accurate information about human rights funding is due to the classification system upon which the Center relies. The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) is the self described "definitive classification system for nonprofit organizations." Developed over the course of six years for the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), which is housed at the Urban Institute, the NTEE has become the national standard for classifying nonprofit corporations.

The problem is that the NTEE classification is flawed and out of date and does not capture the field of human rights, whether domestic or international. Nonprofit organizations cannot correct incorrect classifications if they do not know about them. Many in the nonprofit sector - even at the level of funders affinity groups - are unaware of the NTEE or of the impact of the NTEE on their industry. By educating stakeholders and by opening the NTEE up to stakeholder input, omissions and errors could be easily remedied, and a more nuanced classification procedure worked toward.

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