Responsible Data Stories: Candid.org and Trustworthy Data

As we promote the new Better Deal for Data (BD4D), a practical data governance standard for nonprofits, I frequently refer to “the handful of best nonprofits when it comes to responsible data use”. These nonprofits are already model actors, and their best practices informed the creation of the Better Deal. As we developed BD4D, we would sometimes check its provisions against the behaviors of these organizations, and reach out for insight on their thinking and motivations.

One organization came to my mind often: Candid. I frequently use their products because of the amount of data they have available on nonprofits and foundations. I have admired their approach to creating value with data, and the fact that they have been sustainable financially. We have reached out to CEO Ann Mei Chang and the Candid team on multiple occasions to get advice, and to better understand their approach to data governance. As a result, I thought it was worth sharing why we see Candid as a strong example of the trustworthy approaches we are encouraging through the Better Deal for Data.

What Candid Does

First, I want to share more about how Candid works. Candid was formed through the combination of two major players in U.S. philanthropic data: the Foundation Center, which provided information about foundations, and GuideStar, which provided information about nonprofits. Much of their content is drawn from public disclosures, such as the annual 990 forms that foundations and nonprofits file with the U.S. federal tax authorities. While this information is also available from other sources, Candid takes some extra steps to create value for its users.

Going beyond what is in the 990s, Candid offers a (Bronze, Silver, Gold, or Platinum) “Seal of Transparency” to nonprofits that voluntarily disclose additional information about their impact metrics. Nonprofit organizations know that many of their funders—and certainly those at foundations–look at their nonprofit’s Candid profile, and that contributing additional data is a chance to put their best foot forward, highlighting their work and anticipating common funder questions. Candid also creates value-added products, building earned income via subscriptions and reports. The public 990 documents from all U.S. nonprofits are on their website and are free to access. And, if you wanted to collate the data from hundreds of nonprofits with budget sizes between $5 and $10 million in order to see the average salary of a CEO, CFO, or development director, that’s possible, but it’s a lot of work. So, Candid offers a Nonprofit Compensation Report with those analyses already done for you, for a price. Organizations I have been involved with have certainly bought that report over the years because it’s worth $450 in saved labor.

I’ve always appreciated Candid because they get the majority of their budget from earned revenue. Most similar efforts to build big directory databases in the sky (on the web, that is) fail: over 95% in my estimation. Being an exception to this sorry statistic makes Candid worthy of study–why have they succeeded where others fail?

Clerkin, C., Diomande, M., Koob, A. (2024).The state of diversity in the U.S. nonprofit sector.
Candid. doi.org/10.15868/socialsector.43685 CC BY-NC 4.0

How Candid Measures Up Against the Better Deal for Data

The Better Deal for Data is primarily intended to protect the nonpublic, sensitive data of the people and communities being served by the nonprofit sector. It prohibits the selling of this private data, whether to other nonprofit organizations, or to for-profit “surveillance capitalism” companies–the thousands of data brokers trading in consumer data. Trust is central to the BD4D Standard, supported by its concept of “No Surprises”: that a nonprofit’s community members should not be surprised by how their data is being used (or reused).

Candid’s work measures up well. The data they are using is public data, supplemented by data volunteered by nonprofits with the understanding that it will be made public. Candid does not publish the nonpublic or sensitive data of individuals (they share the salaries of many nonprofit leaders, but that’s because the law requires nonprofits to post these salaries publicly). And, while Candid earns revenue from its enriched data products, it is not directly monetizing personally identifiable or raw data that can be linked to individuals.

In fact, it was Ann Mei Chang’s feedback that helped us strike a balance in the requirements of the BD4D Monetization commitment. This now clearly allows nonprofits to raise funding or earn income based on the data they collect, as long as this does not involve selling sensitive or nonpublic data; that the resulting funds are used for the benefit of their communities and society (including the support of nonprofit programs); and that their stakeholders have a way to request the nonpublic data’s access or deletion.

Since the data on Candid is all provided by nonprofits, either to the government or to Candid voluntarily, no nonprofit should be surprised about the dataset Candid publishes. In fact, nonprofits do not have to contribute any data to be listed on Candid; it freely hosts the detailed 990 data of all U.S.-based nonprofits without regard to whether they’ve created a profile or shared additional information.

One recent example of Candid being trustworthy with nonprofit data made a strong impression on me. A few years ago, Candid began asking nonprofits for diversity data about staff and board members including gender identity, race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, transgender identity, and disability. Many foundations were seeking this data from grantees, and it seemed like a worthwhile addition to the voluntary data contributions. However, even if the data wasn’t associated with specific individuals, given the typically small size of many nonprofit boards and staff it might not be difficult to identify a specific person from a set of unique characteristics. The U.S. federal government’s 2025 backlash against DEI topics made publishing this data much more problematic.

Candid responded swiftly, offering to suppress this data so it could not be viewed publicly, and noting that declining to provide DEI data would not impact an organization’s ability to obtain Candid’s transparency seals. They supported organizations that decided to leave their data publicly available, allowing each organization to make its own choice.

Candid also made it clear that they did not claim ownership of the voluntarily contributed data, and that “organizations are the owners of the data they contribute voluntarily.” This aligns with the BD4D Ownership commitment.

A Responsible Approach

To sum up, I see Candid’s handling of the data of nonprofit organizations as being well aligned with the seven BD4D Commitments. We have high hopes that Candid might in the future endorse or even consider adopting the Better Deal for Data.
Candid is an example of a nonprofit organization that makes revenue from data and data-related products, but not in ways that violate the Better Deal for Data or its Monetization commitment. This Commitment does not prohibit nonprofits raising money from donors using aggregated impact data, or selling data-based products as long as they don’t involve selling out the data of individual users.

In other words, it’s the equivalent of saying don’t be like Meta or Amazon (or 200,000 other surveillance capitalism companies), organizations that appropriate personal data for profit. We hope that nonprofits considering adopting the Better Deal for Data will recognize how Candid’s approach to using data to support funding for its nonprofit operations is responsible data governance (and why Facebook’s is not)!

The most important thing to us is that nonprofits handle data responsibly, whether or not they actually formally adopt our new standard. Candid is a great example of a nonprofit fulfilling this responsibility, finding a path to raising funding for their nonprofit mission without disclosing confidential data.

We look forward to featuring more examples of nonprofit organizations using data responsibly. If you have a responsible data story to share, let us know!