Indicator IV-9	Revenues of Not-For-Profit Humanities Organizations
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Whereas Indicator IV-8, Foundation Funding, deals with foundations that give at least a portion of their monies for humanities activities, this indicator focuses on the many other private, not-for-profit entities that together with such foundations constitute the humanities not-for-profit sector in the United States. Using funding from either governmental or private sources (usually both) either to engage in or to promote humanistic endeavors, these organizations are extremely diverse in both their focus and size, ranging from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to the nation’s 56 state humanities councils. (For amore detailed revenue data for the councils, see Indicator IV-3, State Humanities Council Revenues.) They also include many small “friends of” associations, such as those that help libraries around the country maintain their collections or that provide summer reading programs for neighborhood children.

The data presented here were compiled by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) from the IRS’s Form 990 Return Transaction Files. Form 990, which must be completed annually by every tax-exempt public charity with revenues normally in excess of $25,000, describes these organizations’ financial condition, activities, and key personnel. In analyzing this information, the NCCS employs the National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE), a widely used categorization scheme developed by NCCS, to distinguish among the various kinds of organizations on the basis of their primary mission. While the NTEE includes a category for the humanities, other types of organizations that the Humanities Indicators consider to fall within this category, such as museums and libraries, are classified separately within the NTEE. At the request of the Humanities Indicators’ data analysis team, the NCCS assembled information on all tax-exempt humanities organizations that fall within the Humanities Indicators’ purview at five-year intervals going back as many years as the NCCS database permitted. This yielded data for a 15-year period extending from 1989 to 2004. (For an inventory of the kinds of institutions and groups considered "humanities organizations" for the purposes of this indicator, and examples of the types of organizations included in each of the broad categories of humanities organizations described below, see the Note on the Definition of Humanities Organizations; the humanities not-for-profit sector as defined here does not include private not-for-profit educational programs or institutions.)

The Humanities Indicators’ preliminary analysis of these data, which is presented here, focused on the number and revenues of these organizations, the characteristics of major organizational subsectors (e.g., historical organizations or libraries), and the distribution of revenue dollars among these subsectors. Any subsequent editions of the Indicators will delve further into the data to investigate the human resources of these organizations, as well as their sources of funding.

The preliminary analysis found that between 1989 and 2004, both the number of not-for-profit humanities organizations and their total revenues grew substantially (Figure IV-9a), with most of the growth taking place between 1994 and 1999. During that five-year period, the number of humanities organizations increased by 44%, while the increase in reported revenues was approximately 60%. The picture for the entire 15-year period, however, is different: the number of organizations grew faster, more than doubling between 1989 and 2004.

The fact that the number of organizations grew more quickly than their resources is evident from the decrease in their typical1 revenues over the time period (Figure IV-9b). In 1989, humanities organizations typically reported revenues ranging from $78,000 to $443,000, with median revenues amounting to $163,000. By 2004, humanities organizations typically reported revenues ranging from $42,000 to $264,000, with median revenues of $88,000. Thus by the end of the 15-year period, the universe of humanities not-for-profits was much larger, but populated by more modestly financed organizations. (Had data on the many small humanities organizations with revenues less than $25,000 been available, the median revenue level for the entire period would have been even lower.)

Figure IV-9a, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9b, Full Size Supporting Data

As Figure IV-9b also demonstrates, there was a considerable range in the amount of revenue reported by individual humanities organizations. In 2004, the minimum revenue was a deficit of over $5 million, while the maximum revenue was in excess of $300 million (the figure is not to scale with respect to the minimum and maximum revenues). But throughout the period, the vast majority of not-for-profit humanities organizations—90%—reported revenues that were hundreds of millions of dollars lower than the maximum.

In each year, a handful of organizations, mostly large museums,2 had budgets that dwarfed those of all other humanities organizations. This can be seen in Figure IV-9c, which demonstrates the large share of revenues commanded by museums in 2004. Although they represented only 20% of humanities organizations, museums had close to half of all revenues (for more details on the numbers and revenues of museums from 1989 to 2004, see Figure IV-9d). The inverse was true of historical organizations,³ which amounted to 36% of all humanities organizations but garnered only 18% of all revenues (see also Figure IV-9e; these data do not include the substantial number of museums and historical institutions that are not private not-for-profit organizations but are instead operated by the government and by colleges and universities). Ethnic and cultural awareness organizations (profiled in Figure IV-9f) were similar to historical ones, having a revenue share that was less than half of their share of the total number of humanities organizations. Organizational counts and revenue totals, as well as detailed information on 2004 revenues, for the other types of humanities organizations are provided in Figure IV-9g (Humanities and Arts Councils), Figure IV-9h (Reading Promotion Organizations), Figure IV-9i (Library Organizations), and Figure IV-9j (other humanities organizations).

Figure IV-9c, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9d, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9e, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9f, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9g, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9h, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9i, Full Size Supporting Data

Figure IV-9j, Full Size Supporting Data

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Notes

Note on the Definition of Humanities Organizations The term "humanities organizations," as used in the context of Indicator IV-9, Revenues of Not-for-Profit Humanities Organizations, refers to organizations that promote work or engage in the humanities disciplines or the public humanities. (For a list of these disciplines as well as a description of the types of activities that fall under the heading of "public humanities," see the Humanities Indicators’ Statement on the Scope of the “Humanities” for the Purposes of the Humanities Indicators). These organizations (nonschool) include: Museums Art museums and their support organizations History museums and their support organizations Ethnic heritage museums and their support organizations Multidisciplinary museums and their support organizations Museum associations Historical Organizations Historical societies and their support organizations Historical preservation groups and their support organizations Professional societies and associations Other organizations with a historical focus Library Organizations Libraries (except those with purely science- and medicine-oriented collections) Library support organizations Professional societies and associations Alliances and/or advocacy groups Management and/or technical assistance groups Reading Promotion Organizations This category includes any organization whose primary purpose is to foster literacy among adults or youth (an example would be Reading Is Fundamental). The category excludes schools and tutoring programs. Cultural and Ethnic Awareness Organizations This category includes organizations dedicated to the preservation and dissemination of the history and culture of ethnic groups but not organizations whose primary mission is the social or economic advancement of these groups. Humanities Councils This category includes local, state, and regional humanities (or “arts and humanities”) councils and their affiliated foundations. Other Humanities Organizations Humanities organizations and their support organizations (all disciplines other than history) Alliances and advocacy groups Research institutes and institutions for public policy analysis Professional societies and associations (professional societies for disciplines other than history are included here) Management and/or technical assistance organizations The definition of humanities organizations employed for Indicator IV-9 differs from that used by the Foundation Center in compiling the data that are the basis of Indicator IV-8, Foundation Funding, in two important respects: 1) the definition used for the purposes of Indicator IV-9 includes all art museums (only ethnic and folk art museums are treated in the Foundation Center report), and 2) this definition excludes social science organizations (the Foundation Center includes humanities-oriented social science activities in its analysis). Back to Content

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