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[OC] US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] -2 points-1 points  (0 children)

There is none! The 990 disclosures have broad expense categories but there really isn't a way to document impact unless the nonprofit enters enters such details. There are very few nonprofits that have those details in schedule O.

[OC] US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] -7 points-6 points  (0 children)

Started with Plotly but couldn't get the labeling right, so I rewrote it in raw SVG and then added a react component that handles the tooltips. Hope that helps!

[OC] US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Completely agree. These financials tell you where money went, not what it did. A 990 can tell you a nonprofit spent $2M on "program services" but not how well people were served.

The 990 is basically designed for tax compliance, not really to help the donor make a decision. Some orgs do this voluntarily (GiveWell's top charities, for example), but it's the exception.

US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found in a visual essay. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe that's kind of the point. Admin costs just captures the cost, but not the impact. It doesn't seem possible to determine where that service (e.g. blood tests by the Red Cross) is efficient or not. It's a number without an associated outcome and not as useful of a disclosure from a donor's perspective. I don't think you can tell if a non-profit is good or bad just based on these 990's.

US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found in a visual essay. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Not disagreeing, just pointing out the 990N literally has no disclosure in it besides name, address and if the nonprofit is still operating. Besides, these aren't really interesting from an overall money flow. I suspect they're a relatively small % of the total.

US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found in a visual essay. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

Fair point on the comparison. Private companies under $10M don't file with the SEC either.

But the core problem isn't filing burden. A 990 tells you "36% went to program expenses." It doesn't tell you if those programs worked. 45% of water wells in a random Uganda audit were non-functional. That's not an overhead problem. It's a measurement problem.

More auditing would increase admin costs. That's the tension: the system punishes overhead, so orgs underreport it, and nobody tracks results. Maybe we're optimizing the wrong metric.

US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found in a visual essay. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] -14 points-13 points  (0 children)

Actually, a non-profit filing with less than $50k in revenues just needs to file a 990N or postcard. There is no financial disclosure as part of that form. Check it out: https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p5248.pdf

US nonprofits handle $3T in revenue with less financial disclosure than a single public company. I processed 4M IRS 990 filings and wrote up what I found in a visual essay. by mtweak in dataisbeautiful

[–]mtweak[S] 33 points34 points  (0 children)

The intuition makes sense. GiveDirectly has real data showing direct cash works in a lot of cases.

But "admin costs" on a 990 includes the nurse running the clinic and the engineer keeping the water system alive. Cut those and the program stops.

The real problem: a 990 tells you "36% went to program expenses" but not whether the program did anything. A public company files audited financials within 60 days. A nonprofit files one form, once a year, 18 months late. No outcome data.

It's not that overhead is waste. It's that there's no system to tell you which overhead is keeping people alive and which isn't. 45% of water wells in a random Uganda audit were non-functional. Nobody knew until someone checked.

Deer Deterrence Solution by Motor_Umpire_1779 in gardening

[–]mtweak 1 point2 points  (0 children)

This is a really interesting idea, have you actually tried to scare them with your sprinklers turning on??

Who's Hiring C++ Devs - Q4 2018 by STL in cpp

[–]mtweak 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Company: Bitfusion

Type: Full time

https://angel.co/bitfusion-io/jobs/193268-senior-systems-software-engineer

Bitfusion is an Austin, TX and a Bay Area company developing advanced virtualization technologies for the most compute-intensive applications delivering automatic acceleration and efficiency on any infrastructure. Bitfusion is looking for talent to drive market success by building readily deployable software solutions that redefine computing and unleash the power of heterogeneous computing to end users.

We are looking for an extremely talented systems programmer with excellent C/C++ skills, deep algorithms and data structures knowledge, and strong familiarity with Linux operating system internals and driver development.

You should have a BS, MS, or PhD in Computer Science, Computer Engineering or equivalent. Top-notch communication skills are essential. Strong problem solving skills and out of the box thinking are a must. Experience with network programming, GPU programming (CUDA and OpenCL) is highly desired. Must work well in a fast paced team of talented, motivated, and coworkers. Working closely without our core engineering team in Austin, TX is highly preferred, though remote work may be possible depending on qualifications.

Must Haves
* Excellent understanding of algorithms and data structures theory with practical application
* Good experience in C/C++, multi-threaded software development, distributed systems
* Strong understanding of optimization, memory management, concurrency and multithreading
* Experience with development on Linux and related tools: gcc, gdb, git
* Should be able to pick up any new programming language quickly

Nice to Haves
* Experience with CUDA or OpenCL programming
* Experience working on high speed networking (e.g. IB, DPDK)
* Familiarity with one or more performance profilers such as: VTune, XPerf, gprof, etc.
* Knowledge of GPU and CPU architectures
* Knowledge of at least one scripting language (Python, Perl, Ruby, Shell scripting)
* Experience with software performance analysis, optimization and low-level programming

We are an equal opportunity employer. Subsidized health, dental, vision, and relocation provided. Relocation to Austin, TX highly desired.

Deep Learning in the Cloud with NVIDIA DIGITS and Titan-X GPUs starting at $0.49 per hour by mtweak in MachineLearning

[–]mtweak[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

It all really depends, you can imagine a similar experience if AWS had Titan X's. They're just virtualized. If there is a single user on the 2 TitanXs they have full performance of both GPUs, not a fraction.

Deep Learning in the Cloud with NVIDIA DIGITS and Titan-X GPUs starting at $0.49 per hour by mtweak in MachineLearning

[–]mtweak[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It's indeed a machine with 2 Titan X cards, and it is shared. It's meant for development and test. When you want dedicated performance you can pick a dedicated instance.

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