Largest US Charities by Cause: Where the Money Goes

The NTEE Category System

Every nonprofit organization in the IRS Business Master File is assigned a code from the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE), a classification system developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics. NTEE codes give researchers, donors, and policymakers a consistent way to compare organizations doing similar work.

The system uses a letter for the major category (A through Z) followed by a two-digit number for the subcategory. For example, A20 represents "Arts and Culture — General," while E22 represents "Hospitals — General." There are 26 major categories in the NTEE system.

PlainCharity organizes all organizations by their NTEE codes. You can browse all 26 categories to see how many organizations fall into each cause area, explore by state, or look up organizations in specific cities.

The 26 major NTEE categories include:

• A — Arts, Culture, and Humanities
• B — Education
• C — Environment and Animals
• D — Animal-Related
• E — Health Care
• F — Mental Health and Crisis Intervention
• G — Diseases, Disorders, Medical Disciplines
• H — Medical Research
• I — Crime and Legal-Related
• J — Employment and Job Training
• K — Food, Agriculture, and Nutrition
• L — Housing and Shelter
• M — Public Safety, Disaster Preparedness
• N — Recreation and Sports
• O — Youth Development
• P — Human Services — Multipurpose
• Q — International, Foreign Affairs
• R — Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy
• S — Community Improvement, Capacity Building
• T — Philanthropy, Voluntarism, Grantmaking
• U — Science and Technology Research
• V — Social Science Research
• W — Public, Societal Benefit
• X — Religion, Spiritual Development
• Y — Mutual and Membership Benefit
• Z — Unknown/Unclassified

Health: The Dominant Category by Revenue

When measured by revenue, the health sector dominates the US nonprofit landscape. Large hospital systems, academic medical centers, and health insurance organizations operate as nonprofits and generate revenues in the tens of billions of dollars annually.

The largest nonprofit health systems in the US — including Kaiser Permanente, CommonSpirit Health, Ascension Health, Providence, and HCA's nonprofit affiliates — each generate $20–100 billion in annual revenue. Their nonprofit status stems primarily from their community benefit obligations: uncompensated care, medical education, and health research.

This concentration means that health nonprofits, as a category, receive the largest share of all nonprofit revenue, yet individual donors contribute relatively little of that revenue. Hospital and health system revenue comes mostly from insurance reimbursements (Medicare, Medicaid, private insurers). When people donate to "health charities," most of their money goes to disease-specific research organizations (cancer, heart disease, diabetes) rather than to hospital systems.

Major disease-specific research organizations include the American Cancer Society, American Heart Association, Susan G. Komen, and hundreds of others. These organizations typically have program expense ratios in the 70–80% range, with the remainder covering fundraising and administration.

Education: Universities and K–12 Support

Education is the second-largest NTEE category by revenue. Major private universities — Harvard, Yale, Stanford, MIT, and others — are among the wealthiest nonprofits in the world, with endowments ranging from $10 billion to over $50 billion. Their annual revenues (tuition, research grants, endowment distributions, donations) place them among the top nonprofit organizations by any financial measure.

Below the elite university tier, the education category includes private K–12 schools, community colleges, vocational training programs, literacy organizations, tutoring nonprofits, and education research institutes. These organizations are far more dependent on donations and grants than universities, which can fund operations from tuition and endowment income.

Alumni giving is a major revenue driver for universities. In fiscal year 2023, US colleges and universities received a combined $58 billion in charitable contributions, according to the Council for Advancement and Support of Education — making higher education one of the largest recipients of charitable dollars in the country.

Human Services: The Widest Spread of Organizations

The human services category (NTEE codes P, K, L, O, J, and related) contains the broadest diversity of organizations — from large national networks like the Salvation Army, Feeding America, and United Way to small local food pantries, shelters, after-school programs, and immigrant services organizations.

Feeding America, the largest hunger-relief network in the US, coordinates a network of over 200 food banks and 60,000 food pantries. It operates as a distribution and fundraising hub rather than a direct service provider, routing food and funds to affiliated local organizations.

The Salvation Army and Catholic Charities USA are among the largest human services nonprofits by revenue, each operating thousands of programs across the country. These organizations receive significant government funding alongside charitable contributions, which makes their program expense ratios somewhat different from purely donation-funded nonprofits.

For donors interested in maximizing direct community impact, the human services category often offers the best opportunity to find smaller, community-rooted organizations where individual donations represent a meaningful share of their budget.

Religion: Large in Count, Variable in Scale

Religious organizations (NTEE code X) represent the largest single category by number of organizations in the IRS BMF. However, they are underrepresented in financial statistics because most churches are not required to file Form 990 and are therefore excluded from publicly available data.

The organizations that do file in category X tend to be religious associations, denominational bodies, religious media organizations, and interfaith service groups rather than individual congregations. The actual financial footprint of US religious organizations — estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars annually when including all congregations — is far larger than what is visible in the IRS data.

Giving USA estimates that religious organizations receive the largest share of all charitable donations by Americans, approximately 27–30% of total giving, primarily through individual weekly contributions and major gifts to building funds.

Arts and Culture: Revenue Concentrated at the Top

Major performing arts organizations, museums, and cultural institutions dominate arts nonprofit revenue. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Smithsonian Institution affiliates, Metropolitan Opera, and major symphony orchestras each generate revenues in the hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually.

Below these flagship institutions, the arts sector is populated by thousands of small community theaters, regional orchestras, local arts councils, and individual artist support organizations that operate on far smaller budgets and are more dependent on local government grants and individual donations.

Arts organizations have been among the hardest hit by shifts in cultural habits and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic. Many mid-sized institutions have reduced programming, merged, or closed in recent years.

Revenue Concentration in the Nonprofit Sector

A striking feature of the US nonprofit sector is how concentrated revenue is at the top. NCCS research consistently finds that a tiny fraction of organizations account for the vast majority of total nonprofit revenue.

Roughly 1% of organizations — primarily large hospitals, universities, and national service organizations — account for an estimated 85–90% of all nonprofit revenue. The remaining 1.8+ million organizations share roughly 10–15% of total revenue. The median nonprofit in the IRS database has annual revenue under $100,000.

This has implications for donors. By dollar amount, most charitable giving flows to organizations that already have substantial resources. Donors who want their contributions to make a measurable difference relative to an organization's total budget may find more impact in smaller organizations, where a $500 or $1,000 donation represents a meaningful percentage of the annual budget.

How to Find Charities in a Specific Cause Area

PlainCharity provides several ways to find organizations in a cause area that matters to you:

• Browse all 26 NTEE categories to see organizations grouped by cause
• Use the search page to find organizations by name or keyword
• Explore state pages to find organizations in a specific state, filtered by category
• Check city pages to find nonprofits serving a specific community

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the NTEE classification system?

The National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) is a classification system developed by the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) to categorize nonprofit organizations by their primary purpose. It uses a letter code (A–Z) for broad categories and a two-digit number for subcategories. The IRS uses NTEE codes to categorize organizations in the Business Master File (BMF).

How much money flows through US nonprofits each year?

The US nonprofit sector generates over $1.5 trillion in annual revenue, according to NCCS estimates. This represents roughly 5–6% of US GDP. Health-related nonprofits — primarily hospitals and health systems — account for the largest share, followed by education and human services.

What percentage of nonprofit revenue goes to the top organizations?

The nonprofit sector is highly concentrated. Roughly 1% of organizations account for an estimated 85–90% of all nonprofit revenue. Most of the 1.87 million organizations in the IRS database are small, with annual revenues under $100,000.

How can I find charities in a specific cause area using PlainCharity?

PlainCharity organizes all 1.87 million organizations in our database by NTEE category. You can browse all 26 categories on our categories page, or search by organization name, city, or state. Each organization's NTEE code is displayed in its profile, and you can filter by category within state and city pages.