In August of 2023, Diehl Consulting Group (DCG) exported the IRS Exempt Organizations Business Master File Extract (EOBMF) for Indiana and Kentucky from the public IRS website. Next, the list was filtered to exclude all organizations whose listed billing address fell outside of the targeted five-county region (i.e., Gibson, Posey, Vanderburgh, and Warrick Counties in Indiana and Henderson County, Kentucky). Finally, any organizations with a subsection code other than 3 (i.e., 501(c)(3) organizations) were removed from the dataset. The resulting list served as the population of nonprofits in the five-county region on which the snapshot of the nonprofit sector is based.

The 2023 Greater Evansville Nonprofit Survey was modeled after a similar survey administered in 2018. While comparisons across years offer valuable insights, it should be noted that the responding samples of nonprofit organizations varied across years. Characteristics of the different samples (e.g., operational revenues of responding organizations) may influence cross-year comparisons.

Each iteration of the Greater Evansville Nonprofit Survey was modeled after a similar survey conducted by the Center for Nonprofit Excellence in Louisville, KY (CNPE) in 2016, though individual items were added, removed, and/or reworded each year. The survey changes were jointly designed by Welborn Baptist Foundation (WBF) and DCG. Ultimately, the 2023 survey consisted of 53 items and required approximately 20 minutes to complete. Using the EOBMF (described above) as the population of nonprofits in the five-county region, a targeted sample was drawn for participation in the survey. First, any churches, family foundations, trusts, scholarship funds, school groups (i.e., PTOs, booster clubs), and recreational sports leagues were removed from the list to better isolate the organizations of particular interest to WBF. Next, any organizations with a reported income and revenue amount of 0 were deemed inactive and removed from the list.

The resulting sample included 361 unduplicated organizations across the five counties. Efforts to obtain contact information (i.e., email addresses) for these organizations included searches of publicly available sources such as websites and private contact lists shared by WBF and other funders. Ultimately, valid email addresses were identified for 289 (80%) of the organizations. The survey was launched on September 28, 2023. An electronic survey link was delivered to each organization (with available contact information) via email, and subsequent reminder emails were delivered periodically over the following 8 weeks. A total of 138 survey responses were received, representing 38% of the targeted sample and achieving a 7% margin of error at a 95% confidence level [1].

Most (74%) survey respondents identified as Executive Director or CEO, though other directors, board members, and administrative assistants were also represented.