The Nonprofit World at a Glance

The nearly 1.6 million tax-exempt entities with 501(c) designations in the United States run the gamut from churches and cultural centers to food banks and homeless shelters to disaster relief organizations, and they can be national, statewide and local in scope.

The Charitable Sector, a report produced by the Independent Sector, a national member organization focused on the charitable community, shows that:

• Nonprofits in the U.S. provide jobs to 11.4 million people, or 10% of the national workforce, making it the third largest employment sector in the U.S., behind retail and manufacturing.
• In 2016 in the U.S., about $390 billion was raised in charitable contributions, representing a 2.7 percent increase from 2015.
• Around 25% of the adult population in the U.S., around 63 million people, volunteer for nonprofit organizations annually.
• At an hourly rate valued nationally at $24.24 per hour, Americans contributed $193 billion of their time to nonprofit organizations in 2016.