Legacy Data Downloads With nccsdata

Overview

Theget_data() function from nccsdata downloads NCCS legacy data sets hosted on publicly accessible S3 buckets and processes them for the user.

In this vignette, we provide several examples of how this function can be used to retrieve this legacy data.

library(nccsdata)

Downloading Core Data

We can define the type of data, range of data (in years), organization type, and form type using the arguments dsname, time, scope.orgtype, and scope.formtype respectively.

core <- get_data(dsname = "core",
                 time = "2015",
                 scope.orgtype = "NONPROFIT",
                 scope.formtype = "PZ")

The function downloads NCCS core data from the year 2015 for all non-profits that file both full 990s and 990EZs. Other possible argument values are:

scope.orgtype
- CHARITIES: All charities
- NONPROFIT: All nonprofits
- PRIVFOUND: All private foundations
scope.formtype
- PC: Nonprofits that file the full IRS Form 990
- EZ: Nonprofits that file 990EZs only
- PZ: Nonprofits that file both full Form 990s and 990EZs
- PF: Private foundation filings

The data is available from the years 1989 to 2019. get_data() also provides prompts with the size of the requested data downloads.

Filtering data using NTEE codes

We can also pull only a subset of the data based on NTEE classifications using the various ntee associated arguments in get_data().

core_art <- get_data(dsname = "core",
                     time = "2015",
                     scope.orgtype = "NONPROFIT",
                     scope.formtype = "PZ",
                     ntee = c("ART"))

In the above code snippet, we pull the same dataset but only select rows belonging to nonprofits involved in the Arts, Culture and Humanities. A full description of NTEE codes is available here. These descriptions can also be accessed using ntee_preview().

Filtering Data By Geography

We can subset the data by geographic units with the geo arguments from get_data().

core_NYC <- get_data(dsname = "core",
                     time = "2015",
                     scope.orgtype = "NONPROFIT",
                     scope.formtype = "PZ",
                     geo.state = "NY",
                     geo.city = "New York City")

The code above returns rows belonging to Nonprofits from New York City, NY. Additional arguments geo arguments can be used to subset the data by county (geo.county) and region (geo.region).

geo arguments must be used in conjunction with one another:

geo.state = “IN”, geo.county = “Allen” for “Allen, IN”
geo.state = “CA”, geo.city = “San Francisco” for “San Francisco, CA”

get_data() layers these filters to subset the data by the desired geographic unit. Using only 1 argument will return all geographic units that fall within it (e.g. geo.region = “south” returns all rows from the southern states or geo.city = “Lebanon” returns all rows belonging to cities with the name ‘Lebanon’).

Appending BMF Data to Core Data

get_data() automatically appends NTEE metadata to the requested data set. Appending metadata from the IRS Business Master File (BMF) requires the downloading of an additional download of 185 MB and can be toggled on/off with append_bmf.

corebmf <- get_data(dsname = "core",
                    time = "2015",
                    scope.orgtype = "NONPROFIT",
                    scope.formtype = "PZ",
                    append.bmf = TRUE)

BMF metadata is now appended to the downloaded Core data set.

Downloading BMF Data

The geo and ntee arguments mentioned above can also be used to download and filter BMF data.