4 free ways to access Candid’s demographic data 

Comprehensive and public nonprofit demographic data is central to supporting more transparent and informed decision making in our sector. To date, over 55,000 nonprofits have shared some information on their staffs’ and board members’ race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability status, through their Candid profile.

Our purpose at Candid is to get key information—like this demographic data—into the hands of those who rely on it to guide their decision making. Candid’s team of technologists (of which I am a member) has been charged with providing multiple channels to make this information freely available and easily accessible. 

Our ultimate goal: make it easy for anyone, including funders, to retrieve and reuse demographic data, relieving the burden on nonprofits asked to submit it in multiple ways, many times, to different funders. Here are the four solutions the Candid tech team built to suit our various peers, partners, and collaborators’ needs. 

4 ways to access nonprofit demographic data for free

1. Visit a Candid nonprofit profile  

The first way folks can access demographic data is by registering for a free account on Candid’s GuideStar. Candid’s GuideStar contains comprehensive information on over two million nonprofits, including data on their mission, financials, people, and programs. This means you can also easily view the demographics of any nonprofit that has submitted this data through their Candid profile.  

To find and view organizations’ demographic data in Candid’s GuideStar: 

1. Navigate to the main search page to get started. 

2. In the search menu, select the Organization tab and toggle on the Diversity setting to return results for all nonprofits that have updated their organizational demographic data.  

3. (Optional) Refine your results by adjusting the platform’s built-in search filters or using additional keywords, such as an organization’s name.  

4. Click on the organization that best matches your search to navigate to their profile page. 

5. On the profile page, scroll down to the Organizational demographics section to view this data. 

2. Browse and uncover insights on the Demographics via Candid dashboard 

Through a grant funded by the Tableau Foundation, Candid created a public Tableau dashboard that allows people to search for and surface demographic data-driven insights on U.S. nonprofits and foundations. To discover the demographic makeup of specific organizations, visitors can input a list of Employer Identification Numbers (EINs) or use the dashboard’s built-in filters, such as state, region, subject areas, populations served, and total expenses.  

This free tool can help folks understand the demographic makeup of their partners and peers in the sector, as well as establish benchmarks to assess progress towards their organization’s diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) goals.   

Available for public use, browse the Demographics via Candid dashboard to:  

1. Uncover insights into how many organizations have provided demographic data through Candid’s profiles. 

2. Visualize aggregated demographic information by race & ethnicity, gender identity, cis/transgender status, sexual orientation, and disability status. 

3. View the overall demographic makeup of employees in the social sector, including leaders, co-leaders, board members, senior staff, and staff. 

4. Download or export your search results as an image, PowerPoint deck, or PDF file to use in presentations or to create a snapshot in time for later reference. 

3. Request a downloadable file of demographic data  

People can also request a free copy of demographic data from Candid’s nonprofit profiles in a single, downloadable file. This option is geared towards folks that want to overlay demographic data to understand how it intersects with other research and data sources. Common examples of these complimentary datasets include grant, compensation, financial, census, and subject area-specific data, such as homelessness, climate change, and education. This information can also help you set benchmark KPIs and metrics that are important for your organization to track over time.  

To request demographic data in downloadable file, please visit our website.  

4. Integrate demographic data directly into your systems 

To access data instantaneously, you can integrate Candid’s free Demographics API into your grants management system (GMS) or other software tools. Our free API powers various use cases that fit within your new or existing grantmaking processes. For example, you can: 

• Add organizations’ demographics to grantee records automatically, or with the push of a button, to keep your GMS up to date with the latest information. 
• Streamline the grant application processes by auto-populating applicants’ demographic data in your current platform. 
• Create data-driven reports and analyses on the demographic composition of your grantmaking portfolio in your existing systems. 

Visit our developer portal to get more information about Candid’s free Demographics API.

If you’d like to learn more about how you can start using our newly launched, free Demographics API, register for our upcoming webinar, Fast, free, and available now: Candid’s Demographics API, on Thursday, July 13, 2023, at 2 p.m. Eastern Time.  

Interested in integrating the most comprehensive source of nonprofit and funding data into your technologies? We offer several APIs to power the websites and systems you use to support your mission-driven work. For more information on Candid’s APIs, please visit our website.