Mission: To “demystify” the social sector by providing data on its scope, constraints, and potential.

Background: Developed with funding from Amazon Web Services and Vanguard Charitable, Candid’s U.S. Social Sector dashboard offers key data and insights about the makeup and impact of civil society, including previously unreleased statistics on the racial composition of leaders and funding flows to charities. To that end, the free resource provides data to outline the sector’s scope, constraints, and potential and is designed to help create an understanding of this surprisingly large segment of U.S. society for those unfamiliar with what it consists of and how it is structured.

Outstanding Web Features: The Overview to the dashboard provides visitors with a tutorial, including answering the question, “What is the social sector?” The information in this section provides visitors with a snapshot of the social sector’s structure and helps them visualize the many components of its global ecosystem. A graphic accompanied by a chart of definitions illustrates the range of organizations that make up the social sector in the United States, with a circle representing each distinct type of organization and its positioning in relation to other types of organizations. The dashboard also features interactive charts and maps in its Organizations section, which provides more in-depth data on U.S. nonprofits, including where they are located, which issue areas they are focused on, the top twenty-five largest nonprofits and foundations, and the number of nonprofits that have earned a Guidestar Seal of Transparency. The Money section details nonprofit revenue that includes funding flows to charities, listings of nonprofits and foundations by revenue range, and a chart of functional expenses. Visitors can view foundation funding by subject area, population served, and support strategy for a deeper dive, as well as a list of the top twenty-five largest grants awarded in 2018. Lastly, the People section offers information on the number of people employed by the sector, the racial demographics of nonprofit leadership, CEO compensation, and staffing levels.