To provide a sense of the level of financial risk these nonprofits might face if they lost their government grants, we report their operating surplus with and without their government grants and the share of nonprofits that would have a negative operating surplus were they to lose their government grants. A positive operating surplus indicates a nonprofit can cover all of its expenses and has funds available to reinvest in its mission, while a negative surplus indicates they could not do so in that given tax year.

Note that the composition of government grant–receiving nonprofits changed significantly from 2021 to 2023, with roughly 25,000 organizations dropping out of the dataset. We therefore suggest using caution when making direct year-over-year comparisons of aggregate figures. Changes in totals may reflect shifts in who is filing, not just changes in funding levels or financial risk.