Live IRS Form 990 data

Executive pay your board can defend, in the minutes.

When a funder, a journalist, or the IRS asks how your board set the executive director's salary, the right answer is a comparability memo. Consultants charge thousands for one. Comp Comps pulls real officer compensation from IRS 990 filings of similar nonprofits in your state and budget range, and formats it to the IRS rebuttable presumption standard, for $99.

Pull live comparables See pricing
25%excise tax the IRS can charge an executive on pay it deems excessive, under IRC section 4958, plus 200% if uncorrected
10%excise tax on each board member who approved it, up to $20,000 per transaction
3comparables are all the regulation requires for organizations under $1M in gross receipts (Treas. Reg. 53.4958-6)
$99per Comp Comps memo. Custom consultant compensation studies run into the thousands.

How it works

From three dropdowns to a board-ready memo.

No survey to buy, no consultant engagement, no afternoon lost in 990 PDFs. The data is public. The formatting is the product.

1

Describe the role

Pick the position, your state, and your budget band. Add a cause area if you want a tighter peer set.

2

We read the 990s

Comp Comps queries IRS Form 990 filings via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer live, samples organizations across your revenue band, and extracts what each one actually reported paying that role, with EIN and fiscal year.

3

File the memo

Percentiles, the full comparables table, and the methodology drop into a memo formatted for the IRS rebuttable presumption. Print it, attach it to the minutes, refresh it next year.

Live comparables

Run your comparability set now.

This is not a screenshot. When you hit the button, the tool queries ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer for 501(c)(3) filers matching your criteria and reads officer compensation from their most recent Form 990 filings.

READY Pick a role, state, and budget band, then pull the comparables.
No pull yet. The comparables, percentiles, and draft memo will render here.

Compensation figures are as reported on each organization's IRS Form 990 (officers, directors, trustees, and key employees), via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Organizations with no reported pay for the role are excluded. Positions and titles appear exactly as filed.

The IRS test

The rebuttable presumption, in plain English.

IRC section 4958 lets the IRS tax "excess benefit" pay at a charity. But if your board follows a three-part procedure, the law presumes your compensation is reasonable, and the burden of proof flips to the IRS. See the IRS summary and Treas. Reg. 53.4958-6.

1. Independent approval

Compensation is approved in advance by the board or a committee whose members have no conflict of interest in the arrangement.

This is the memo

2. Appropriate comparability data

The board relied on appropriate data as to comparability: what similarly situated organizations pay for functionally comparable positions. For organizations under $1M in gross receipts, data from three comparable organizations is enough.

Template included

3. Contemporaneous documentation

The decision and the data behind it are documented in the minutes by the later of the next board meeting or 60 days after the vote. The memo ships with the determination and signature blocks ready to complete.

The stickExcess benefit means a 25% excise tax on the executive, 200% more if not corrected, and 10% on managers who knowingly approved it.
The scrutinyExecutive pay is public. Every figure in your 990 Part VII is one ProPublica search away for any funder, board candidate, or reporter.
The habitThe presumption attaches per decision. Boards that document comparability every year make it routine instead of a scramble.

Pricing

A consultant deliverable at a software price.

You are not paying for the data. The data is public. You are paying for a defensible peer set, clean percentiles, and a memo your board can adopt in one motion.

Comparability Memo

$99 per role, one time
  • Fresh pull from current IRS 990 filings
  • Peer set matched on state, budget band, and cause
  • Percentiles plus full comparables table with EINs
  • Rebuttable presumption formatting and minutes language
  • Delivered as a finalized PDF within one business day
Request a memo
Boards renew this

Memo + Annual Refresh

$99 then $79 per year
  • Everything in the single memo
  • Re-pulled and re-issued before each year's comp vote
  • Reminder ahead of your board's compensation cycle
  • Year-over-year movement noted in the memo
  • The presumption is per decision, so the memo should be annual too
Set up the annual memo

Memo + Board Call

$199 per role, one time
  • Everything in the single memo
  • 30 minute walkthrough with your board or comp committee
  • Methodology questions answered live before the vote
  • Useful when a funder or auditor prompted the review
Book memo + call
ThousandsA custom compensation study from a nonprofit consulting firm, with a multi-week engagement to match.
HundredsCandid's national Nonprofit Compensation Report, sold as a data report. You still build the memo yourself.
HoursThe DIY route: hand-pulling 990 PDFs one org at a time and retyping Part VII into a spreadsheet, every single year.

Get your memo

Tell us the role. The memo comes back finalized.

Nothing to pay today. We run the pull, finalize the memo under your organization's name, and send it with an invoice for $99. If the peer set is too thin to stand behind, we say so and you owe nothing.

Got it. Your comparability pull is queued, and the finalized memo lands in your inbox within one business day, invoice attached. Questions in the meantime: georg.chimion@gmail.com.