How can I verify a non-profit organization's staff salaries and donation disbursement?
Wednesday, September 8th, 2010 at
4:28 am
I am newly widowed and came across an online charity, Soaring Spirits Loss Foundation, who takes donations and grants to provide a few blog sites for the grieving public. I could not find a listing for them at give.org. How do I verify the organizational structure and how they spend their inome?
Like this post? Subscribe to my RSS feed and get loads more!
Every nonprofit is required to file a form 990 with the IRS and with their state government.
It is public info.
The SSLF website doesn’t give a physical address, but it does give their EIN and DLN numbers, at the bottom of each page.
Their area code is in California.
Start with the CA Dept. of Corporations.
Tell them you want to see the 990 for this org.
http://www.ftb.ca.gov/businesses/Exempt_organizations/Entity_list.shtml
They are required to provide disclosure of their audited financial reports on request. If this information is not on their web site, you can contact them directly to send it to you.
Other sites similar to give.org are charitynavigator.org and guidestar.org – you may want to check all three to see if the charity is listed.