Givvy Blog

A while back I was on a call with a guy who used to be part of one of the large donor advised funds.  We got onto to a conversation about categorizing your charities and how we were using NTEE (National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) Codes and IRS Activity Codes to do this.  His take?  “We asked our customers about this and they told us that they didn’t like our categories - they didn’t match how they viewed the organizations they supported.”

What is wrong with NTEE and IRS Activity Codes?  Well, for starters, they may only describe part of what a nonprofit does.  Is Horizons for Homeless Children a “Child Day Care” (NTEE Code  P33) or an “Advocacy” organization (P01) or is it about Homeless Shelters they work with (L41).  In fact it’s all of these.  However, if you asked someone who knows the organization to classify the work of HHC, they would probably tell you “services for homeless children” or something similar.  And that’s not on the NTEE list at all.  Same with the IRS - they have several Activity Codes that relate to the mission of HHC, but nothing described as “services for homeless children.”

Here’s another example - a search of Audubon on Charity Navigator’s web site returns 16 organizations with representation of the following “categories.”

• Environment : Botanical Gardens, Parks, and Nature Centers
• Animals : Zoos and Aquariums
• Environment : Environmental Protection and Conservation

I’m fairly certain that most of these Audubon organizations celebrate, preserve and protect the environment and the birds and other wildlife found there.

So here at Givvy we have taken a different approach.  As you can probably guess we favor a more open and flexible approach that gives control to our users, all while preserving the way that charities are classified by these other systems.  We can’t wait to show it to you!