The Ecology of US Education Nonprofits

Empirical information on education nonprofits is needed to understand their impact, variation, and distribution. Using tax data from 233,897 nonprofits, this paper highlights three clusters of nonprofits (educational institutions, professional improvement organizations, associational groups), subdivided into ten groups and 29 types. It presents their distribution and offers other insights. Spatially, nonprofits are prevalent in large states and cities, but the top 500 cities only make up half of all nonprofits. Temporally, there has been an explosion of nonprofits founded since 2010, many driven by professional rather than associational organizations. Financially, more than half of nonprofits reported zero revenue and assets. We discuss various data strengths and limitations, opportunities for new research, and contribution to education policy and politics.