TOV Research · Free & open
The State of Christian Nonprofits
Deep insights into the 69,968 Christian nonprofits doing the work across America, with the peer benchmarks no one has ever shared with them. All from public IRS data. All free.
69,968
Christian nonprofits
15
ministry types
$178k
median revenue
15.8 yrs
average age
Insights into 69,968 organizations
There are nearly two million registered exempt organizations in the United States. Most analyses lump faith-based work together with churches, or miss it entirely. We classified every org using the IRS's own definitions, separating churches from the Christian nonprofits that serve alongside them.
The result: a clear, defensible picture of 69,968 Christian nonprofits (3.5% of all exempt orgs), younger than the field overall (avg 15.8 years vs 23.5) and overwhelmingly small.
3.5%
of all exempt orgs
34%
file full financials
300,574
churches set aside
The U.S. nonprofit landscape
Registered exempt organizations by segment
Explore by ministry type
Pick a ministry type to see the “people like you” numbers: the real staff, volunteer, revenue, and growth benchmarks for 69,968 peers, drawn from 23,708 filed 990 returns.
Choose a ministry type
General Christian Ministry
41,194 organizations nationwide · avg. age 14.8 years · benchmarks from 8,867 filed 990s
Median staff
1
top quartile 7+
Median volunteers
10
top quartile 50+
Median revenue
$106k
annual
Revenue growth
+6.5%
median, year over year
Where ministries land on revenue
Annual revenue, from filed 990s
Size distribution
22% report revenue to the IRS
Where they're concentrated
Top states by organization count
Active organizations over time
990 filings, 2019–2025
Filings grew +128% since 2019, outpacing the sector's 111.5% baseline.
Financial health
Median signals from 5,131 filed 990s in this segment
Reserve cushion
9.8 mo
typical 3.2–28.3 mo
Operating margin
+3.3%
40% run a deficit
Goes to programs
88.1%
of total spending
Donation-funded
94.2%
of revenue from gifts
Leverage
0.4%
liabilities ÷ assets
ECFA audit tier
5.8%
revenue ≥ $3M threshold
Sector signals from filed Form 990s, shown as context rather than grades. These are not ECFA metrics: ECFA accredits governance and process, not spending ratios. “Reserve cushion” is net assets relative to annual spending (a solvency proxy, not strictly liquid cash). The “ECFA audit tier” share is the portion of the segment with revenue at or above ECFA’s $3M independent-audit threshold.
How does your ministry compare?
Join the free Rypple community and see your organization measured against 41,194 peers: staff, volunteers, revenue, and growth. Always free for nonprofits.
Join the Rypple community →What they do
Christian nonprofits cluster in a handful of IRS sectors, but ministry type tells a richer story than sector codes ever could.
Where they are
Concentrated across the Sun Belt and the South, with Texas, California, and Florida leading the country.
How we built this
Every number here comes from public-domain IRS data: the Exempt Organizations Business Master File and e-filed Form 990 returns. We classified 1,974,830 organizations using the IRS's own church marker (foundation code 10) before identifying Christian nonprofits, so “Christian nonprofit, not church” is a definition, not a guess. Benchmarks come from 23,708 full 990 filings.
Some segments are floors, not ceilings
Ministries like Anti-Trafficking and Pregnancy & Adoption rarely say so in their legal name (they're “Care Net,” “Heartbeat”). We surface them from 990 mission text, but their counts should still be read as minimums.
Filing growth ≠ real growth
Total 990 filings rose ~111.5% since 2019, but most of that is paper filers moving to e-file under the 2020 mandate. Judge a segment by whether it beat that baseline, and trust the year-over-year revenue growth as the clean signal.
Source: IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File (BMF) + e-filed Form 990 returns, public domain. Because the inputs are public domain, these findings are free to share and cite.
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