IRS 990 API: How to Get Nonprofit Financial Data in JSON

The IRS makes nonprofit 990 filings public, but public does not always mean easy to use. The IRS bulk data downloads provide filings in XML, which is useful if you are prepared to build a pipeline for downloading, parsing, normalizing, and updating the data.

If your application needs nonprofit financial data in JSON, a 990 API gives you a shorter path from an organization’s EIN to usable records.

What developers need from a 990 API

Once you have identified an organization, most applications need the same basic workflow:

1. Retrieve the organization’s current record by EIN.
2. Get its latest 990 filing.
3. Browse filing history across multiple tax years.
4. Select the financial fields your application actually needs.

If you are starting with an organization name instead of an EIN, the nonprofit EIN API workflow covers that first step. Once the EIN is known, it becomes the stable identifier for the rest of your application.

Move from one filing to a financial history

A latest-filing lookup is useful for a profile page or a quick verification flow. It is not enough when you want to show how a nonprofit’s revenue, expenses, or net assets have changed over time.

The 501see read API lets Developer Basic accounts retrieve an organization’s filing history, not just its most recent filing. That makes it possible to build financial trend views, compare organizations across years, or enrich an existing nonprofit record without asking your application to understand IRS XML directly.

For one-off research, our guide to looking up 990 tax returns explains where the filings come from and how to read them. For software, the API provides the repeatable version of that workflow.

Request the data your application needs

990 filings contain a lot of information. A useful API should let you choose the right level of detail instead of making every request carry every available field.

The 501see API supports a few ways to do that:

• Summary data for a compact organization or filing view.
• Financial data when you need more detail from the core financial statements.
• All fields when you are building an internal research or data pipeline.
• Selected fields when your application needs a focused set of values, such as total revenue and total expenses.

The response stays in JSON, with fields selected for the request. That means a directory, dashboard, CRM, or research tool can use the same underlying filing data without reproducing the IRS’s raw filing format in every part of the product.

What you can build with nonprofit financial data

Once nonprofit filings are available as structured records, the use cases go beyond displaying a single annual report:

• Financial trend views for nonprofit profiles
• CRM and onboarding enrichment
• Donor and grantmaker research tools
• Organization comparisons by revenue, expenses, or assets
• Internal data products for nonprofit markets and communities
• Search and discovery experiences that combine identity, financial, and program data

Developer Basic also includes broader read access to nonprofit, officer, grant, and foundation data. You can start with financial records and add those related datasets as the product requires them.

Free verification, then a read API

The 501see developer plans follow the way applications usually grow:

• Developer Free covers name search, EIN lookup, and a latest-filing lookup for verification-oriented workflows.
• Developer Basic adds filing history, selectable financial fields, and the broader read API for applications that need ongoing access to nonprofit data.
• Developer Pro adds asynchronous exports and webhooks when you need an initial data load or change notifications.

That lets you begin by verifying a nonprofit and move to deeper financial data when your application needs it. You do not have to build an IRS ingestion pipeline before you know whether the workflow is valuable.

Read the 501see developer documentation to create a developer account and start working with nonprofit data in JSON.