Charity API: nonprofit data for 100+ countries
The GiveRadar charity API is a REST API that returns integrity assessments, financial data and organization details for 7.9 million+ nonprofits across 100+ countries, from 50+ official sources. A free key is generated instantly, with no credit card and no approval process.
curl "https://giveradar.com/api/v1/search/ ?q=red+cross&country=US" \ -H "Authorization: Bearer gr_your_key"
What does the charity API return?
The charity API returns each nonprofit's integrity assessment, category, cause tags, red flags, a review summary and description on the free tier, with financials, officers and contact details on paid tiers.
The integrity assessment is a 0 to 100 score of how much a charity discloses: Registration, Financial Transparency, Governance, Contact Availability and Data Recency. It measures disclosure, not impact, and it cannot be bought: charities cannot pay to change their score. In API responses the field is integrity_score, and a legacy trust_score key mirrors it for backward compatibility.
Core record
Name, country, registration identifiers, category and cause tags, SDG alignment, integrity assessment, red flags, description, website, city, founded year, review summary, program and admin spend percentages, and the GiveRadar Analysis.
Financials and people
Revenue and expense figures, filing history, officer and trustee records (21 million+ officer records in the dataset), executive compensation where filed, and contact details.
Fact-based red flags
Three types only: high executive pay, stale filings and bare-minimum disclosure. News about a charity is available through the API as display-only context; it never affects the score.
REST endpoints and the OpenAPI specification
The charity API exposes REST endpoints under /api/v1/ and publishes a machine-readable OpenAPI 3.1 specification at giveradar.com/api/openapi.yaml.
| Endpoint | What it returns |
|---|---|
| GET /api/v1/search/ | Charity search by name text (q=) with a country= filter, paginated JSON |
| GET /api/v1/charity/{slug}/ | Full charity detail record (fields vary by tier) |
| GET /api/v1/charity/{slug}/financials/ | Financial filing history by fiscal year |
| GET /api/v1/charity/{slug}/news/ | Recent news coverage, display-only context |
| POST /api/v1/charity/{slug}/reviews/ | Submit a community review |
| GET /api/v1/stats/ | Platform-wide dataset totals |
| GET /api/v1/health/ | Service health check |
Authentication is a Bearer API key (gr_ prefix) in the Authorization header, or ?api_key= as a query parameter. There is no OAuth flow. Keys are generated, rotated and revoked at the API page, and an agent-readable authentication guide is served at giveradar.com/auth.md.
Search takes a required q parameter and an optional country filter, and returns paginated JSON. There is no collection-listing endpoint: every query starts from a name, an EIN or another registration identifier.
Responses are the same shape on every tier. Fields your plan does not include come back as null with an _upgrade hint rather than disappearing, so client code written against the free tier keeps working when you move up. The full endpoint reference with parameters and response schemas is in the API documentation.
import requests r = requests.get( "https://giveradar.com/api/v1/search/", params={"q": "wildlife", "country": "GB"}, headers={"Authorization": "Bearer gr_your_key"}, ) for charity in r.json()["results"]: print(charity["name"], charity["integrity_score"])
Ship it on the full record
The free tier is for building. Pro is for running: ten thousand requests a day and every field the source publishes, on the same endpoints and the same schema you already wrote against.
- Revenue, expenses and filing history per fiscal year
- Officers, trustees and executive compensation where filed
- Contact details, for use in line with GDPR and local law
- No contract and no sales call: upgrade and downgrade on your own
- Everything on the free tier, plus the paid fields
- Same REST endpoints, same JSON shape
- Enterprise at 100,000 a day with bulk export
What can you build with the charity API?
The API is used by donation platforms, banking and payroll products, corporate CSR teams, foundations and donor-advised funds, compliance and due-diligence teams, academic researchers and journalists. Six of the things they build with it:
Round-up donations
Let users round up every transaction to a verified charity. Search by cause, country or name, and settle knowing each recipient is on an official government register.
Giving inside the portfolio
Let clients allocate part of their returns to charities matched to their values. Cause tags and SDG metadata make a recommender straightforward to build.
Employer matching gifts
Verify an employee's chosen charity in real time before approving a match: registration, address, identifier and current status in one call.
Corporate giving dashboards
Index a company's grantee portfolio, keep it in sync, and generate audit-ready reports from the same source the regulator publishes.
Verify campaigners up front
Anyone claiming to represent a charity can be checked before donations are accepted: does the identifier exist, and is the organization actually registered.
Pre-grant due diligence
Registration check, disclosure signal and red-flag scan in one request, replacing the spreadsheet and the manual lookups before a grant goes out.
How is this different from a single-country nonprofit API?
Most nonprofit APIs cover one country. GiveRadar covers 7.9 million+ organizations in 100+ countries through one endpoint and one schema, so a charity in Germany, Brazil or Australia comes back in the same JSON shape as a US 501(c)(3).
US records are built from IRS data, UK records from the Charity Commission register, and other national registries feed their own countries. Where no open government register exists, including much of the Middle East and parts of Africa and Asia, organizations are listed from vetted directories instead, and the API never labels a directory-sourced organization as registry-verified. Country-by-country coverage is browsable on the countries index.
Does the charity API include Form 990 data?
For US nonprofits, yes. Financial figures follow each organization's latest IRS Form 990 filing and are served through the /api/v1/charity/{slug}/financials/ endpoint, with revenue, expenses and filing history by fiscal year. Officer and compensation records are available on paid tiers. Outside the US, financials come from each country's registry or tax authority where those bodies publish them, so coverage varies by country.
On paid tiers the API returns null rather than an estimate where a figure was never filed. On the free tier, financial fields are nulled by tier gating with an _upgrade hint in the response, so a free-tier null does not mean the figure is missing upstream.
How do donation platforms use it?
As a verification layer. Query search by name and country, or use the MCP verify_charity tool with a registration identifier such as an EIN or charity number, to confirm an organization exists in official records or vetted directories before listing it. Charity detail responses include a donation_url field on all tiers where one is known, so you can route donors to the charity's own official page. GiveRadar itself does not process donations.
For bulk files rather than API access, see the charity dataset.
How does access work: keys, tiers and the MCP server?
Access starts with a free key generated instantly on the API page: no credit card, no approval process, ten requests a day. Three tiers share one API and one schema.
Ten requests a day
Search, charity detail with core fields, integrity assessments, red flags, reviews and the GiveRadar Analysis. Instant key, no card, no approval.
Ten thousand a day
The full record: financials, officers, filing history and contact details, on the same endpoints and the same JSON shape as the free tier.
One hundred thousand a day
Bulk export and custom terms. A high daily ceiling rather than unlimited, so you always know what you are buying.
Current plans and pricing live on the API plans page. Limits are per key per day.
For AI agents, GiveRadar also runs an MCP server at giveradar.com/mcp/ with four charity tools, and anonymous access works without a key. Setup, tool reference and client examples are on the charity MCP server page.
What the charity API does not include
The charity API does not perform sanctions screening, AML checks or watchlist matching of any kind. We removed name-based sanctions matching because it produced overwhelming false positives on common charity names, and we will not ship a compliance feature that unreliable. Use a dedicated screening provider for that requirement.
No impact ratings or verdicts. The integrity assessment measures what an organization discloses, not the good it does. Do not surface it as "safe to donate" or as a ranking of which charity is better.
Coverage is uneven because sources are uneven. Registers differ in what they publish. Financials, officers and contact details are present where the source provides them and absent where it does not, and directory-sourced countries carry thinner records than registry-sourced ones.
Contact data is enriched, not only registry-sourced. Websites, social profiles and contact details come partly from what charities publish on their own sites. These are organizational contact points, restricted to paid tiers, to be used in line with GDPR and local law. We honor removal requests.
Freshness varies per country. Each record carries its own last-updated date. There is no single global refresh cycle, so read the date on the record rather than assuming one.
Bulk and commercial use of the dataset is licensed per contract via [email protected]. Our methodology documentation and data schemas are published openly under CC BY 4.0, while the underlying registry data stays subject to each registry's own terms. Details are on the charity dataset page.
Charity API FAQ
Is there a free charity API?
Yes. The GiveRadar charity API has a free tier of ten requests a day with an instantly generated key, no credit card and no approval process.
Free requests return core fields including the integrity assessment, category, red flags and description across 100+ countries. The MCP server at giveradar.com/mcp/ is also usable without any key, at ten requests a day per IP.
Does the charity API include Form 990 data?
For US nonprofits, yes. Financial figures follow each organization's latest IRS Form 990 filing and are served through the /api/v1/charity/{slug}/financials/ endpoint, including revenue, expenses and filing history.
Officer and compensation records are available on paid tiers. Outside the US, financials come from each country's registry or tax authority where those bodies publish them, so coverage varies by country.
Can I use the API for sanctions or AML screening?
No. GiveRadar does not offer sanctions, AML or watchlist screening.
Name-based matching produced near-total false positives on generic charity names, so we removed it rather than ship unreliable compliance signals. Use a dedicated screening provider for that requirement; GiveRadar confirms registration and disclosure data only.
Is this the same thing as a nonprofit API or a nonprofit database API?
Yes. Charity API, nonprofit API and nonprofit database API all describe the same service.
It is REST access to GiveRadar's database of 7.9 million+ nonprofits across 100+ countries. Use whichever term your stack prefers; the endpoints are identical.
Build on 7.9M+ nonprofit records
A free key takes a minute, returns the same schema as every paid tier, and needs no card.