ENGL 102: Davis, L. (Spring 2024): Finding nonprofits

Google is not always an appropriate tool with which to conduct research, but sometimes using Google is not only appropriate, but necessary! Your task at hand involves first finding a nonprofit organization, and the best way to do this is to search Google using some directed search strategies to ensure you are getting relevant results.

First, visit Google.com. In the search bar, type the kind of nonprofit you are seeking (for example: community health, LGBTQIA+ rights, nutrition, and so on) followed by the word nonprofit and "site:org." Site:org tells Google to only include results for websites that end in .org, which signifies the website is for an organization, and is usually reserved for nonprofit organizations.

The example in this screenshot shows how I would perform a Google search for an animal welfare nonprofit:

The results for this search include animal welfare nonprofits in Washington, the USA, and around the world. If I only want results for local animal welfare nonprofits, I would amend my search by adding "Washington State" to the end of my search query. Be sure to include "Washington State" in quotation marks! Searching this way means that Google will only show results for Washington State and not also for Washington, D.C. Here is how that search would look:

Once you've performed your Google searches and have found an organization website that you would like to analyze, it's important that you double check that the organization is a nonprofit. You should be able to do this directly on the organization's website. Using the Google search outlined on the left of this page, I found a Washington sate organization called Pasado's Safe Haven. By scrolling down to the bottom of the organization's website, I see that Pasado's Safe Haven is a registered nonprofit, and that they include their EIN# (an identifying number, demonstrating the organization is registered with the government). When looking for this information, try scrolling to the bottom of the organization's website, or click their "About" page. Click the image below to enlarge it.