Department of Data Liberation
Grantseeker is working to make IRS 990 data more open and accessible
Source: Mahmud Ahsan on Unsplash. @Mahmud: your kiddo has an standing job offer when he is ready!
Project Brief
- Like nearly all grant management platforms, we use the free and open data provided by the IRS on form 990 (and affiliated publications).
- The IRS does a nice job making the bulk files available. But if you've ever worked with it, you know there's still a lot of cumbersome data munging required.
- For several years, Grantseeker used the predecessor AWS OpenData project that had been sponsored by the IRS directly.
- This project basically performed the "undifferentiated heavy lifting" to make the source files "cloud optimized" as individual assets in an open S3 bucket ♥.
- Sadly the IRS stopped supporting this project at the end of 2021, in favor of just hosting the bulk files on irs.gov.
- And so... Grantseeker, Inc. has decided to take up the stewardship baton!
- AWS OpenData team has graciously agreed to sponsor us, and we welcome everyone and anyone who wants to contribute to maintaining this as a community asset going forward.
- Cloud Optimized Source Files
- All available 990 filings will be made available as individual urls in their original XML and PDF formats. Associated index and schema files will also be available in a standard format. No login or API keys will be required :). Just pure, open data.
- Continuous DataSync for 100% Coverage
- We will run a continuous sync job to ensure that our data repository always has 100% of the IRS publication data (within a ~48hr latency). No humans will be involved, unless there are breaking changes to the IRS publication patterns.
- Community Stewardship
- To ensure the long-term sustainability of this effort, we are standing up a simple community governance group that will ultimately inform decisions (e.g. bucket schema) and provide long-term continuity for the project (ie. Grantseeker can go on vacation). Anyone who cares about this dataset is welcome to participate! Please reach out.
Interested learn more & to contribute?
Project Repository ->
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