Nonprofits per resident, county by county

Nonprofits. Every organization in the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File as of November 2026, 1,975,975 records in all. The file covers every kind of tax-exempt organization, including 501(c)(3) charities, and churches that register voluntarily.

Counties. Each organization is placed in a county by the ZIP code of its registered mailing address, using the Census Bureau’s 2020 ZIP-to-county file, with GeoNames for PO-box ZIP codes the Census file leaves out. A ZIP code that crosses a county line goes to the county holding most of its land. 1,929,913 organizations are placed. Another 6,297 are in US territories, at military mail addresses, abroad, or have a ZIP code with no known county.

Chapters filed at a national office. Some national groups register every local chapter at their headquarters address. The National Wild Turkey Federation, for example, files 3,917 chapters at one ZIP code in Edgefield, South Carolina, which would make that county look like the most nonprofit-dense place in the country. When 50 or more of a group’s chapters, and at least half of them, share one ZIP code, those chapters are left out of the county counts. That covers 39,765 chapters. They are still in the national total of 1,975,975.

Virginia’s independent cities. Many of Virginia’s independent cities share ZIP codes with the county around them, so a count by ZIP code leaves them nearly empty. Those cities are counted together with their surrounding county, much as the Bureau of Economic Analysis does, and the county’s name lists the cities it includes. Cities with ZIP codes of their own, such as Richmond, Norfolk, and Virginia Beach, are counted separately.

Population. Census Bureau county estimates for July 2024. Connecticut now reports by planning region, so its eight counties use the July 2020 estimates instead.

Sources. IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File, Census Bureau population estimates, Census ZIP-to-county relationship file, GeoNames (CC BY 4.0), and county outlines from the Census Bureau’s cartographic boundary files.