There are over 1.5 million registered nonprofits in the United States, according to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, including public charities, private foundations and entities like chambers of commerce, volunteer-run organizations and civic leagues. These organizations vary greatly in size, purpose and vision. But what are the biggest nonprofits in each state? In which sectors do they operate? How long have they been in existence? We researched data from all 50 states and Washington D.C. to find the answers.
Economic impact
Nonprofits are formed to make a change in a local community or for public benefit, but they are also a large force of the American economy, accounting for 11.4 million jobs and 10.3% of all private sector employment according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
Top sectors represented by the largest nonprofits
In our research, we found that the largest nonprofits in each state (when calculating by total receipts and assets) were concentrated in five areas: health, education, conservation, finance and community-based organizations. In 33 states plus Washington D.C., a health organization tallied in as the largest nonprofit. Just six states have a community organization as their largest nonprofit, and six more have an education organization as their largest. This is followed by four states that have a finance organization as their largest nonprofit and just one lone state, Virginia, whose largest nonprofit is The Nature Conservancy.
It turns out that health organizations not only represent most of the states’ largest nonprofits, but they also make up the top five biggest nonprofits when looking at all of the data from this study combined. Coming in at number one is the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan Inc. in Oregon, established in 1955, which has total receipts amounting to a $66,889,601,170. California’s Dignity Health is behind it, but with significantly less total receipts, which amounted to $10,283,716,874.
Rounding out the top five is UPMC in Pennsylvania with over $9 billion in total receipts, Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio with $8.8 billion in total receipts and Banner Health in Arizona with $8.5 billion in total receipts. Conversely, the smallest nonprofit out of all the data that was studied was the Sandia Foundation in New Mexico, a financial nonprofit whose total receipts were $62,411,485.
Some of the largest are in the smallest states
Interestingly, some of the largest nonprofits in the country are represented in the smallest states, such as a financial nonprofit called Communfund in Connecticut, which has total receipts of $4,771,370,345. And Saint Francis Hospital in Oklahoma also has quite the large amount of total receipts, which equal $3,970,090,877.
Longevity of the largest nonprofits
Many of these large nonprofits have been long established, with a majority of them having a founding date in the 20th century (the oldest being The Billings Clinic in Montana, dating back to 1925). But there’s still plenty of room for the younger nonprofits at the top, with the youngest nonprofit, Sanford Health in North Dakota (established in 2011), coming in at #19 on our list with total receipts of $3,413,720,012.
Image by Shubham Dhage
