American Heart 1.0% vs Orthopedic Surgeons 17.85%: 'American X' Charity Officer Pay 2023

The problem: Every December a charity-watchdog blog runs the "these nonprofits pay their CEOs too much" story off four hand-picked Form 990 filings, frames it as a sector-wide scandal, and moves on. That framing falls apart at scale. When you pull every "American X" health charity in the IRS Form 990 record above $5M in revenue, the picture isn't charities pay their executives too much. It's that they split into two structurally distinct clusters that share a single tax-exempt category. Public-donor disease charities — the household-name ones that solicit donations through TV ads and walk-a-thons — cluster under 3% of revenue on officer pay. Doctor-dues professional societies and medical specialty boards — the ones that collect membership fees from physicians — cluster between 10% and 18%. Same 501(c)(3), same NTEE major group, same naming convention, two completely different operating models. This post is what the FY2023 leaderboard actually shows.

This is a documentary audit of officer-compensation ratios across 61 "American X" health-classified 501(c)(3)s with FY2023 revenue at or above $5M. Every count links back to the underlying IRS Form 990 PDF on ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer. The two-tier finding is real, the methodology is disclosed up front, and the framing watchdog blogs usually slap on top is almost always wrong.

What is the 'American X' health-charity officer-pay audit? A point-in-time pull of every IRS Form 990 financial record indexed by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer for organisations with american in the name and NTEE major group 4 (Health), filtered to FY2023 revenue at or above $5M, then ranked by officer-compensation ratio (Form 990 line 5 officer comp divided by Part I line 12 total revenue, multiplied by 100). The metric measures current officer compensation as a share of total revenue — what each org paid its named officers in the latest filing year — not total executive headcount or employee salaries, which Form 990 records separately on Part IX line 7.

Why it matters: Officer compensation as a share of revenue is the cleanest single financial-discipline read on a tax-exempt organisation. The IRS made it a top-of-form line item in the redesigned Form 990 precisely because it's the number reasonable donors and regulators want at a glance. Aggregating it across a named cohort of similarly-classified charities is the cleanest way to see whether the cohort behaves as one operating model or several.

Use it when: You're comparing peer charities on financial discipline, building donor research on a household-name cohort, surfacing the operating-model split between disease-awareness charities and physician-dues societies, or tracking a single org's compensation ratio across multiple filing years.

Key findings

• American Heart Association (EIN 13-5613797) reported officer compensation of 1.00% of FY2023 revenue on $925M total revenue — the largest org in the cohort and one of the lowest-ratio. Sub-1% comp ratio held steady across the 2018-2023 filing window.
• American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (EIN 36-2110592) reported officer compensation of 17.85% of FY2023 revenue on $46M total revenue — the highest single ratio in the cohort. Officer-pay dollars rose roughly 39% from 2020 to 2023 while revenue fell 47% from the 2020 peak.
• Public-donor cluster averages 1.95%, doctor-dues cluster averages 11.67%. Eight of the most-recognised public-disease charities in the cohort (Heart, Cancer Institute, Cancer Society, Diabetes, Lung, Hematology, Cancer Research, Clinical Oncology) cluster sub-4%. Ten medical specialty boards / academies / colleges (Orthopedic Surgeons, Dermatology, Internal Medicine, Pediatrics, Cardiology, Osteopathic, Gastroenterology, Neurosurgeons, Roentgen Ray, Pharmaceutical Scientists) cluster between 5% and 18%. Almost a 6x gap between cluster means.
• American Osteopathic Association doubled its compensation ratio from 3.96% to 11.60% across five filings (FY2019 to FY2023) while revenue fell 29% over the same window. Officer-pay dollars rose while the revenue base shrank.
• American Cancer Society ran a $99M operating deficit in FY2023 ($656M revenue against $756M total functional expenses), and has run a deficit in 5 of the last 10 reported filing years. ACS officer-compensation ratio sat below 1.00% throughout — the deficit is the structural story, not the comp ratio.
• Six household-name orgs lost more than 15% of revenue year-over-year in their latest filing: American College of Gastroenterology -30.86%, American Telemedicine Association -28.38%, American College of Radiology -22.91%, American Institute for Cancer Research -17.88%, American Lung Association -16.08%, American Osteopathic Association -15.36%.
• Cohort totals: 61 orgs, $3.58B combined revenue, median officer-comp ratio 5.08%, mean 5.52%. 32 of 61 (52%) sit above 5%. 11 of 61 (18%) sit above 10%. One org (AAOS) sits above 15%.

In this article: The leaderboard top by revenue · The leaderboard top by comp ratio · Story A: Two-tier pattern · Story B: AAOS 17.85% outlier · Story C: AOA comp-ratio doubling · Story D: Six declining-heritage orgs · Story E: ACS deficit pattern · Methodology · What the data does NOT support · Press lift-out

The FY2023 'American X' health-charity leaderboard — top 10 by revenue

This is the cohort sorted by FY2023 total revenue descending, with the officer-compensation ratio in column 6. Every row's underlying Form 990 PDF is one click away on ProPublica's per-org page.

The top of the leaderboard already tells the story. Five of the top 10 — AHA, ACS, ASCO, ADA, ASH, ALA — sit at or below 4% officer-comp ratio. They're the cohort's public-donor names. The other five — AAP, ACR, ACCF, ABIM — sit between 5% and 8% and run on professional-society economics: meeting fees, board-certification fees, journal subscriptions, dues. Same tax exemption, distinguishable revenue mix.

The FY2023 'American X' health-charity leaderboard — top 10 by officer-comp ratio

The leaderboard re-sorted by officer-compensation ratio descending. This is the audit's headline view.

Geographic clustering: 6 of these top 10 high-comp orgs are headquartered in Illinois. Chicago has been the historic headquarters cluster for US medical professional societies for decades — AMA, AAOS, AAD, ASDS, AOA all sit there. The Illinois concentration is a structural artefact of where physician-membership organisations were founded, not a regulatory anomaly. The American Liver Foundation is the lone public-donor name in this top 10 and at $5M revenue is the smallest org in the leaderboard.

Story A — The two-tier pattern: public-donor vs doctor-dues

The cohort splits cleanly into two operating models that share a single 501(c)(3) tax-exempt designation:

Public-donor cluster (officer-comp ratio under 3%):

These are the household-name disease-awareness charities. Their revenue mix is dominated by individual public donations, corporate sponsorship, fundraising events, planned giving, and program-restricted grants. Officer compensation runs sub-3% of revenue at scale.

Doctor-dues cluster (officer-comp ratio above 10%):

These are medical specialty boards, professional academies, and physician societies. Their revenue mix is dominated by membership dues, board-certification fees, continuing-education and conference revenue, and journal-publication income. Officer compensation runs between 10% and 18% of revenue — almost 6x the public-donor cluster's mean.

This is not a scandal observation. It's a structural-governance observation. The IRS 501(c)(3) designation does not distinguish a $925M public-donor disease charity from a $46M physician-membership academy; they are filing the same form under the same exemption code. Reasonable readers might assume these operating models are separated by tax law. They aren't. The audit's point is that they should be distinguished in any peer-comparison or watchdog analysis that uses Form 990 line 5 / line 12 as its base ratio.

Story B — The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons outlier

The American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons (EIN 36-2110592, headquartered in Rosemont, Illinois) reported officer compensation of 17.85% of revenue in FY2023 on total revenue of approximately $46M. This is the single highest officer-comp ratio in the cohort. The five-year trend:

Officer-pay dollars rose from approximately $5.9M in FY2020 to $8.2M in FY2023 — a 39% increase — while total revenue dropped 47% from the FY2020 peak. The 2020 spike in revenue (to $86M) was the cohort's COVID-period surge year for AAOS — the post-2020 normalisation collapsed the revenue denominator while the comp numerator continued to rise. The result is the cohort's sharpest single ratio. Underlying filing: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer record for AAOS.

This row is the audit's clearest single-org named-entity finding. Specialty-press outlets that cover orthopedic surgery (Becker's ASC Review, Orthopedics Today) tend to cite their named professional societies on financial governance without the public-donor-charity moralising that gets attached to ACS-style stories — the AAOS row is well within their normal coverage scope.

Story C — The American Osteopathic Association comp-ratio doubling

The American Osteopathic Association (EIN 36-2170786, Chicago, Illinois) saw its officer-compensation ratio nearly triple across five filing years while its revenue fell 29% over the same window:

The pattern is identical to AAOS in shape if not in magnitude: dollar comp rising while revenue contracts, producing a ratio that compounds in the wrong direction. The AOA row has the additional context that osteopathic-medicine governance has been visibly contested in the US physician-licensing community for the last several years, with ongoing public discussion of the relationship between AOA, the American Osteopathic Boards, and the wider DO certification framework. The financial trend documented in the Form 990 series is consistent with the public account of that period. Underlying filing: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer record for AOA.

Story D — Six declining-heritage orgs lost 15%+ revenue YoY

Six recognisable cohort orgs reported revenue declines greater than 15% year-over-year in their latest filing:

Each is a household name in its specialty. Several have rising compensation ratios despite the revenue collapse — ACG sits at 7.33%, AOA at 11.60%, ACR at 5.75%. The point of this sub-story is that the FY2023 filing window captures a coordinated revenue-erosion year across multiple named "American X" health charities. Whether that's a post-COVID normalisation, a structural decline in dues-based memberships, a one-off dip in conference revenue, or a combination is not visible from a single year's 990. The directionality is. Each of these orgs would warrant a per-filing read of the next FY2024 990 (when ProPublica indexes it, on the typical 18-month lag) to see whether the decline continued or reversed.

Story E — The American Cancer Society operating-deficit pattern

The American Cancer Society (EIN 13-1788491) reported FY2023 revenue of $656.8M against total functional expenses of $756.3M — a $99.4M operating shortfall. The 10-year filing history (pulled from ProPublica's full Form 990 series for ACS, beyond the actor's 5-year saved window) shows this isn't a one-off:

ACS has run a deficit in 5 of the last 10 reported filing years. The officer-compensation ratio sat below 1.00% throughout; the deficit is not a comp story. The ACS row is included in this audit because the cohort framing demanded it (the second-largest "American X" health charity by revenue) but the structural read is different from the rest of the cohort. The largest US disease charity by name recognition has run an operating shortfall in half its reported years over the last decade — and the FY2023 shortfall ($99M) is its largest in eight years. That's a separate story from the officer-pay leaderboard, and it's the audit's strongest signal-by-its-absence finding. Underlying filing: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer record for ACS.

Methodology

• Tool: ApifyForge's nonprofit-explorer Apify actor against the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer public dataset, which itself is the ProPublica index of IRS Form 990 e-filed returns. The actor wraps ProPublica's public search and per-org endpoints; it does not scrape paid databases. The build deployed on 9 May 2026 incorporates two fixes uncovered during this audit: (1) a have_filings: null value from ProPublica's search index no longer causes the per-org enrichment step to be skipped, and (2) compensationPct is now computed by the actor from the raw Form 990 dollar fields (compnsatncurrofcr divided by totrevenue) rather than ProPublica's pct_compnsatncurrofcr column, which is always zero for full Form 990 filers and is only populated for Form 990-EZ.
• Underlying data source: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — public, free, authoritative as the index layer over IRS Form 990 e-file returns. Every row in this audit traces back to a public ProPublica per-org page of the form https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/{ein-without-hyphen} and the underlying Form 990 PDF.
• Cohort: Search query american with NTEE major group 4 (Health), maxResults=500, sorted by revenue. ProPublica returned 500 indexed orgs matching the name pattern within the NTEE-4 health classification. Restricted at analysis time to orgs whose latest filing showed total revenue at or above $5M. Final clean cohort: 61 orgs.
• Date range: Latest indexed filing for each org. ProPublica's latest available filings at the time of this audit were FY2023 (with period-ending dates between 2023-06 and 2023-12, depending on each org's fiscal year). The IRS-to-ProPublica indexing lag is approximately 18 months; FY2024 filings will not be cohort-complete until late 2026.
• compensationPct definition: IRS Form 990, Part I line 5 (compensation of current officers, directors, etc.), divided by Part I line 12 (total revenue), multiplied by 100. This is officer compensation only — it excludes other employee salaries (Part IX line 7), benefits, and pension contributions. The metric is the IRS's own top-of-form line-5/line-12 ratio.
• Fields parsed per org: totalRevenue, totalExpenses, totalAssets, totalLiabilities, raw officer-comp dollar amount; computed compensationPct, netAssets, revenueGrowthPct, financialHealthScore; 5-year filingHistory with the same fields per year; pdfUrl to the IRS 990 PDF on ProPublica.
• Reproduction: every count is re-fetchable via the actor with the same query (american + nteeMajor: "4" + maxResults: 500) on or after 9 May 2026. Anyone with an Apify account can re-run the audit — the underlying ProPublica endpoints are public.

What the data does NOT support

This is the section any journalist or analyst should read before quoting any number from this post. The audit measures one thing — officer-compensation ratio across a specific named cohort — and it is honest only when those scope limits are stated.

• Form 990 line 5 is officer compensation only. It excludes other salaries (Part IX line 7), employee benefits, pension contributions, deferred compensation outside the officer set, and contractor payments (Schedule O). A complete executive compensation picture for any single org requires reading Part VII (compensation of officers, directors, trustees, key employees, and highest-compensated employees) plus Schedule J (supplemental compensation information). Coverage that uses this audit's compensationPct should describe it as officer compensation specifically, not total executive compensation.
• The cohort is intentionally bounded. "American X" is a name-pattern filter. The same audit run on national, society, foundation, institute, association, or federation query terms would surface a different but overlapping set of named entities. The two-tier pattern (public-donor cluster vs doctor-dues cluster) is robust within the "American X" cohort and almost certainly extends — but verifying that requires additional searches against different name patterns. The bounded cohort is the audit's reproducibility guarantee, not a claim that "American X" is the complete universe of US health charities.
• What's excluded. Hospitals (most do not have American in the name and are NTEE-4 sub-classified separately). Universities and research universities (NTEE major group 2). St. Jude Children's Research Hospital / ALSAC (different naming convention). For-profit healthcare operators (HCA, Steward, Envision — these don't file 990s). Religious-affiliated charities that opt out of 990 filing. Form 990-EZ filers (the cohort is Form 990 only).
• The two-tier pattern is structural, not a verdict. The audit shows that public-donor disease charities cluster sub-3% and doctor-dues professional societies cluster 10-18%. This is a description of the cohort's revenue mix, not a normative judgment. A specialty board with $46M revenue from physician-certification fees is a different operating model from a national disease charity with $925M revenue from public donations; the IRS does not require either to publish the comparison. Reasonable boards in the doctor-dues cluster would defend the higher ratio as proportionate to a smaller revenue base, a more concentrated operating function, and a different fiduciary duty to members rather than to public donors. The audit does not adjudicate that defense; it documents the spread.
• One-year ratios can swing for one-time reasons. AAOS's 17.85% FY2023 ratio is the cohort's sharpest single number, but the 5-year history shows a 6.84% reading in FY2020 (post-COVID surge year). A multi-year mean is a more defensible per-org headline than any single year. The audit publishes the latest year because that's the cleanest cohort-comparison frame, but per-org write-ups should reference the multi-year history wherever the cohort tail (small orgs, one-off events, COVID-period anomalies) is in play.
• ACS's deficit is not a compensation story. The $99M FY2023 operating shortfall is included in this post because the cohort framing required ACS, but the comp-ratio finding for ACS is under 1%. Coverage that uses the ACS row should distinguish the deficit (a structural revenue-vs-expense pattern across 10 reported years) from the comp ratio (which has been stable and low). Conflating the two would misread the data.

Press lift-out for journalists

A copy-paste-ready version of the headline finding:

"A 2026 ApifyForge audit of IRS Form 990 filings indexed by ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer found that 61 'American X' health-classified 501(c)(3) charities with FY2023 revenue at or above $5M reported a median officer-compensation ratio of 5.08% — but the cohort splits cleanly into two structurally distinct clusters. Public-donor disease charities (American Heart Association, American Cancer Society, American Diabetes Association, American Society of Hematology, American Lung Association, American Association for Cancer Research) cluster under 3% officer compensation as a share of revenue, with AHA at 1.00% on $925M and ACS at 0.74% on $656M. Medical specialty boards and academies (American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons, American Society for Dermatologic Surgery, American Roentgen Ray Society, American Academy of Dermatology, American Board of Pediatrics, American Osteopathic Association, American Association of Neurosurgeons) cluster between 10% and 18%, with AAOS at 17.85% on $46M — the cohort's highest ratio. Both clusters file under the same 501(c)(3) tax exemption and the same NTEE major group 4 (Health). Methodology: officer compensation as reported on Form 990 Part I line 5 divided by Part I line 12 total revenue, latest indexed filing per org."

Source for citation: ApifyForge, "American Heart 1.0% vs Orthopedic Surgeons 17.85%: 'American X' Charity Officer Pay 2023," 9 May 2026. Underlying data: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer and IRS Form 990 e-file index, queried via the nonprofit-explorer Apify actor on 9 May 2026.

Embeddable visuals

Three chart blocks, reproducible from the tables in this post.

Chart 1 — The two-tier officer-pay pattern

Side-by-side horizontal bar chart. Left panel: public-donor cluster, six bars (ACS 0.74%, AHA 1.00%, ASH 1.24%, AACR 1.90%, ADA 2.21%, ALA 3.10%) all clustered under a 3% gridline. Right panel: doctor-dues cluster, seven bars (AOA 11.60%, ABP 11.81%, AAN 12.54%, AAD 13.14%, ARRS 14.58%, ASDS 14.67%, AAOS 17.85%) all clustered between 10% and 18%. Visual asymmetry — short bars on the left, tall bars on the right — is the chart's whole point. Headline: "Same 501(c)(3) tax exemption, two operating models. American X public-donor charities cluster under 3%. American X doctor-dues societies cluster 10-18%." Source line: "IRS Form 990 line 5 / line 12, FY2023 indexed filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer."

Chart 2 — AAOS five-year comp-ratio vs revenue

Two-line time-series chart, 2019-2023 x-axis. Left y-axis: total revenue ($M) — line drops from $86M in 2020 to $46M in 2023. Right y-axis: officer-comp ratio (%) — line rises from 6.84% in 2020 to 17.85% in 2023. The two lines cross visually around 2021 and diverge sharply through 2022-2023. Headline: "American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons: revenue down 47% from 2020 peak. Officer-pay dollars up 39%. Ratio: 17.85% in FY2023." Source line: "IRS Form 990 filings 2019-2023, AAOS EIN 36-2110592."

Chart 3 — American Cancer Society 10-year operating result

Stacked vertical bar chart, 2014-2023 x-axis. Each bar is total expenses; an overlay line is total revenue. Bars in 5 of 10 years extend above the revenue line (deficit years: 2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2023). Bars in 5 years sit below (surplus years: 2014, 2018, 2020, 2021, 2022 — the 2014 surplus is small). The 2023 bar is the largest gap: $756M expenses against $657M revenue. Headline: "American Cancer Society reported a $99M operating deficit in FY2023, and has run a deficit in 5 of the last 10 reported filing years. The officer-comp ratio sat under 1% throughout — this is the structural story, not the pay story." Source line: "IRS Form 990 filings 2014-2023, ACS EIN 13-1788491."

Frequently asked questions

What is the officer-compensation ratio on IRS Form 990?

The officer-compensation ratio is the share of an organisation's total revenue paid to its named officers, directors, and key executives. On the IRS Form 990, it's computed as Part I line 5 (compensation of current officers, directors, etc.) divided by Part I line 12 (total revenue), expressed as a percentage. It excludes salaries paid to non-officer employees (Part IX line 7), employee benefits, and pension contributions. The IRS made line 5 a top-of-form summary item in the redesigned 990 specifically because it's the first financial-discipline number a donor or regulator wants to see.

Why does the American Heart Association report officer pay at 1.0% of revenue while the American Academy of Orthopedic Surgeons reports 17.85%?

Different operating models inside the same 501(c)(3) tax exemption. AHA's $925M revenue is dominated by individual public donations, corporate sponsorship, fundraising-event revenue, and program-restricted grants — a public-donor disease-charity model. AAOS's $46M revenue is dominated by physician membership dues, board-certification fees, continuing-medical-education and conference revenue, and journal-publication income — a doctor-dues professional-society model. AHA scales the revenue denominator with public donations; AAOS scales the comp numerator with concentrated officer roles serving a smaller member base. Both file the same form, both share the same tax exemption, and the IRS does not distinguish the two operating models in the 990 framework.

Is a high officer-compensation ratio evidence of mismanagement?

No, not on its own. The ratio is a directional indicator that pairs meaningfully with revenue mix, organisational scale, peer-cohort comparison, and multi-year trend. A specialty board with concentrated officer roles serving a small physician membership will run a higher ratio than a $900M public-donor disease charity, and that's a structural artefact of the operating model rather than a verdict on the board. What the ratio is good for: peer comparison within an operating model (orthopedic-surgery board vs dermatology board), single-org multi-year trend (is the ratio stable, or is it rising while revenue falls?), and watchdog-style sector scans where year-over-year shifts are the signal. What it is not good for: standalone scandal headlines that compare a doctor-dues professional society to a public-donor disease charity as if they were the same operating model.

Did the American Cancer Society really run an operating deficit in FY2023?

Yes. ACS reported FY2023 total revenue of $656.8M and total functional expenses of $756.3M — a $99.4M operating shortfall. The 10-year filing history shows ACS has run a deficit in 5 of the last 10 reported years (2015, 2016, 2017, 2019, 2023; with small surpluses in 2014, 2018, 2020, 2022 and a large +$156M surplus in 2021). The officer-compensation ratio remained at or below 1.00% throughout. The deficit is the structural story; it is not a compensation story. Underlying filing: ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer record for ACS.

Why are six of the top 10 high-comp orgs headquartered in Illinois?

Chicago has been the historic US headquarters cluster for medical professional societies for decades. AMA, AAOS, AAD, ASDS, AOA, ASTRO, ACS-medical (a separate org from the disease charity), and several other physician-membership organisations were either founded in or relocated to the Chicago area through the 20th century. The Illinois concentration in the high-comp leaderboard is a structural artefact of where the doctor-dues operating model historically incorporated, not a regulatory anomaly or state-tax effect. Illinois state nonprofit law is not materially different from peer states for 501(c)(3) physician-membership organisations.

How does this audit compare to ApifyForge's defense-contractor lobbying ROI 2024 audit?

Both posts use the same "two-class pattern within a shared regulatory category" framing. The defense-contractor lobbying ROI 2024 audit used Senate LDA filings cross-referenced with USAspending contracts to surface a leverage-ratio split inside the federal-contractor cohort. This audit uses IRS Form 990 filings to surface a comp-ratio split inside the "American X" health-charity cohort. Different regulatory data sources, different operating-model splits, same audit pattern: a single tax-exempt or regulatory category contains structurally distinct sub-cohorts that share a single classification. The 2024 academic retractions publisher leaderboard is the third audit in this methodology family — academic-research charities (AACR, AICR) overlap in the long tail of both datasets.

Where can I download the underlying IRS 990 data myself?

Yes — IRS Form 990 e-file returns are public and free. The IRS publishes the Form 990 e-file index directly. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer is the most accessible public index layer, with per-org pages of the form https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/{ein-without-hyphen} linking to the underlying 990 PDFs. For batched record-level pulls with cohort filtering, NTEE-major-group restriction, and computed compensationPct from the raw dollar fields, ApifyForge's nonprofit-explorer Apify actor wraps the same ProPublica endpoints and adds the per-org enrichment used in this audit.

Related ApifyForge backlink-bait audits

This post is part of an ongoing series of public-data audits using ApifyForge actors. Each post documents a specific industry, regulatory, or platform dataset; together they form a citation network of named-entity research that journalists, analysts, and AI systems can pull from. The methodology pairs:

1. Defense contractor lobbying ROI 2024 — Senate LDA filings cross-referenced with USAspending contracts. Methodology sibling: the same "two-class pattern within shared regulatory category" framing.
2. 2024 academic retractions publisher leaderboard — Retraction Watch + publisher cross-reference. Long-tail overlap: academic-research charities (AACR, AICR) appear in both datasets.
3. Intel, Coca-Cola, Estée Lauder each filed 6 officer-departure 8-Ks in 2024 — SEC EDGAR 8-K Item 5.02 named-entity audit. Methodology sibling: named-entity audit against an authoritative public regulatory data source.
4. SaaS hiring mix engineering vs sales 2026 — careers-page open-role mix audit. Methodology sibling: cohort-level audit with explicit exclusion-disclosure as a strength.

This post is the first in the series to use the nonprofit-explorer actor; the build deployed on 9 May 2026 ships two fixes uncovered during this audit (the have_filings: null enrichment-skip path and the compensationPct computation from raw Form 990 dollar fields rather than the always-zero pct_compnsatncurrofcr column).

Ryan Clinton publishes Apify actors and MCP servers as ryanclinton and builds developer tools at ApifyForge. The audit above was produced via the nonprofit-explorer Apify actor against ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer index of IRS Form 990 e-file returns; the methodology, analysis, and framing are independent of any product positioning.

Last updated: May 2026