LibGuides: Marketing: Nonprofits & Local Businesses

Researching Nonprofits, Private or Local Businesses

Exploring details about nonprofits and private companies, including local businesses, poses a challenge since they aren't obligated to disclose financial information like publicly traded corporations. This lack of transparency makes researching private companies difficult. With fewer reporting requirements, statistical data on your company may be scarce. Additionally, the limited information available on many private companies often results in fewer research articles.

For information on a private or local company, consider searching through the following resources:

Company websites
Magazine or Journal articles (specific to the company or the broader industry)
Newspaper articles (especially for local companies)
Interviews

In cases where information on your specific company is scarce, it's beneficial to explore details about competitors and conduct industry or market research.

Valuable information of this kind can be found in resources like Business Source Premier or ABI/INFORM.

Databases for Nonprofits

Charity Navigator
GuideStar
Create a free account for financials from the IRS.
National Center for Charitable Statistics
CitizenAudit.org
Search Nonprofit Tax Data
Joint Commision Quality Check

Databases for Local Organizations

Los Angeles Times (1985-current) This link opens in a new window
Southern California's largest daily newspaper.
GUIDES:
Regional Business News This link opens in a new window
Business-related news and other non-scholarly resources including radio and television news transcripts, trade publications, magazines, and newswires.
College in Context This link opens in a new window
Overviews of hot topics and social issues. Featuring continuously updated viewpoints, topic overviews, full-text magazines, peer-reviewed articles, news articles, primary source documents, statistics, images, videos, audio files, and links to vetted websites.
CCH AnswerConnect This link opens in a new window
Federal and state tax libraries, including all relevant federal, state, and local primary source material, CCH's explanations, analysis, and practice tools.
Official publications of the Internal Revenue Service and the federal government include the Internal Revenue Code, Internal Revenue Manual, Letter Rulings, IRS Positions, Federal Tax Regulations, and Tax Cases. CCH Explanation and Analysis includes the Standard Federal Income Tax Reporter, Federal Estate and Gift Tax Reporter, Federal Excise Tax Reporter, Tax Treaties Reporter, US Master Tax Guide, and all US State Tax Reporters. Current awareness services include daily and weekly newsletters on developments in various areas of tax law.
Business Insights This link opens in a new window
Provides a broad and detailed coverage of international business. It includes case studies, peer-reviewed articles, and data sets, coupled with references and tools for analysis.
Features of Gale Business Insights: Global include:
- Global company, country and business topic overviews featuring detailed information as well as interactive rankings and statistics, with quick links to associated content
- Company histories and market share data
- Global industry research reports
- Full-text articles from academic journals, business periodicals, newswires and other media outlets
- Hundreds of economic and business indicators that allow for analyses of economies, companies and industries
- Case studies from Gale's CaseBase as well as from our publishing partners worldwide
- Interactive LiveCharts for economic and business indicators that let researchers generate their own analyses and custom charts for reports and presentations
Washington Post (2016-present) This link opens in a new window
A newspaper archive of the print version of the Washington Post from 2016-present.