Original catalog analysis
How recent are the charity financial records in our catalog?
As of 2026-10-23, the median financial period in our 250-profile website catalog ended 480 days earlier. This measures the age of our stored records, not a charity’s filing speed or effectiveness.
Analysis date: 2026-10-23. This is a fixed snapshot, not a live sector-wide survey.
What we measured
Each profile contributes one fiscal year-end date, regardless of its budget. The dataset contains 246 Form 990-based profiles and 4 profiles based on charity financial reports. The age range is 115–1027 days. 0 dates are missing or invalid and 0 fall after the analysis date.
A fiscal year ending in 2025 can describe spending that began in 2024. A retrieval date in 2026 means we collected a source in 2026. It does not turn those expenses into 2026 spending.
| Age band | Profiles | Share of all profiles |
|---|---|---|
| 0–365 days | 66 | 26.4% |
| 366–730 days | 181 | 72.4% |
| 731–1,095 days | 3 | 1.2% |
| More than 1,095 days | 0 | 0.0% |
Across the causes in this collection
These are descriptive groupings within our catalog. They are not rankings of reporting quality. Group sizes and fiscal calendars differ.
| Cause | Profiles | Valid dates | Median days |
|---|---|---|---|
| Animal welfare | 25 | 25 | 480 |
| Cancer care | 25 | 25 | 480 |
| Education | 29 | 29 | 480 |
| Health & medicine | 26 | 26 | 480 |
| End hunger | 27 | 27 | 480 |
| Protect nature | 24 | 24 | 480 |
| Poverty & housing | 22 | 22 | 480 |
| Emergency relief | 15 | 15 | 480 |
| Human rights | 26 | 26 | 480 |
| Veterans & families | 31 | 31 | 388 |
What this cannot tell you
The 250 profiles are a curated convenience sample, not a random sample of U.S. charities. Organizations appear once at the reporting-entity level used by the site. Affiliated organizations may overlap in their activities. We do not weight by revenue or donations, and the result should not be generalized to the nonprofit sector.
We did not search for a newer filing for every organization as part of this analysis. A newer source may exist, or a return may have been amended. These figures cannot establish late filing, noncompliance, transparency, or program results. No charity’s score changes because of this analysis.
Annual reports naturally lag the activities they describe. IRS Form 990 instructions generally set the deadline at the fifteenth day of the fifth month after the accounting period, and describe an extension process. Publication and our collection schedule add other delays. 2025 Form 990 instructions, sections E and F (opens a new tab).
Download and reproduce
Download all 250 input rows and calculated ages (CSV) · Download the complete analysis (JSON). Every row includes the fiscal end, original retrieval date, source type and exact source URL.
Calculation: whole UTC days between each valid fiscal year-end date and 2026-10-23. Age bands use inclusive day ranges. The median is the middle value, or the average of the two middle values. Invalid or future dates are counted separately and excluded from age statistics.
Download the reproduction script and calculation module into the same folder as the JSON. With Node.js installed, run:
node reproduce-catalog-freshness.mjs --snapshot catalog-freshness-2026-10-23.json --out resultsThe script recalculates from the frozen input rows and checks their source hash. It writes JSON and CSV results locally and makes no network requests. Later catalog updates do not replace this dated snapshot.
Source-row SHA-256: 148b7f6afe85feb1addc67113c22e806b7cb1de658547013b1783a7ae72028a0
Use the dates when researching a gift
Read the fiscal period next to each amount. Check the charity’s current reports for newer records, and ask what has changed since that period ended. A current appeal can describe current needs. A historical expense table answers a different question.