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NTEE Codes for IRS 990 Data

The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities offers an important way of breaking down the IRS 990 Data.

One breakdown available in mySidewalk’s IRS 990 data is “activity type.” These categories describe the primary activity of nonprofit organizations. They're self-reported by nonprofits in the form of National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) codes.

What are NTEE Codes?

According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS; the original authors of the NTEE classification system):

  • "The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) is a descriptive taxonomy that helps regulators and researchers aggregate data for statistical analysis."

In mySidewalk, we refer to these codes as “activity types,” because they are broadly descriptive of the things nonprofit organizations do to impact different subject matter areas.

For example, an organization that self-reports as an “Arts, Culture and Humanities” organization (NTEE common code A), will be engaged in activities that seek to influence that topic in their community.

In total, there are 26 possible “common codes” within the NTEE classification system, and over 600 more detailed “core codes.” Data in mySidewalk is summarized by common codes, listed below. A full list of codes and their descriptions can be found on the NCCS website.

  • Arts, Culture and Humanities
  • Education
  • Environment
  • Animal-Related
  • Health Care
  • Mental Health and Crisis Intervention
  • Voluntary Health Associations and Medical Disciplines
  • Medical Research
  • Crime and Legal-Related
  • Employment
  • Food, Agriculture and Nutrition
  • Housing and Shelter
  • Public Safety, Disaster Preparedness and Relief
  • Recreation and Sports
  • Youth Development
  • Human Services
  • International, Foreign Affairs and National Security
  • Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy
  • Community Improvement, Capacity Building
  • Philanthropy, Voluntarism and Grantmaking Foundations
  • Science and Technology
  • Social Science
  • Public and Societal Benefit
  • Religion-Related
  • Mutual/Membership Benefit
  • Unknown

Nonprofit organizations can report more than one NTEE code, or to provide more detailed codes than we currently use. In either case, we use the first-listed code, summarized to the “common code” level of detail.

How does mySidewalk handle missing NTEE data?

Some nonprofit organizations don't self-report their NTEE code.

In many cases, those who fail to do so are subsidiary organizations of larger nonprofits, e.g. local Masonic Lodges. For others, it is self-evident which codes they belong to, e.g. most churches and religious affinity groups would be categorized under “X: Religion-Related.”

mySidewalk attempts to fill in these missing categories. For the 2021 tax year, we reduced missing NTEE data by over half.

We automatically assigned organizations who did not self-report a NTEE code, and were not otherwise classifiable, to category “Z: Unknown”.