.png)
IRS Publication 78 is a database maintained by the Internal Revenue Service that lists every US organization currently recognized as eligible to receive tax-deductible charitable contributions. If you are donating money to a charity and want to confirm that your contribution qualifies as a deduction on your federal income tax return, you search Publication 78 to verify the organization's status. If an organization is not in this database, your donation to it is generally not deductible.
Publication 78 is now fully online. The IRS hosts it through its Tax Exempt Organization Search (TEOS) tool at apps.irs.gov, replacing the printed booklet that the agency once published annually.
The database lists organizations that hold 501(c)(3) status or other tax-exempt classifications that entitle donors to a federal charitable deduction. For each organization, the database shows the legal name registered with the IRS, the employer identification number (EIN), the state of incorporation, and the deductibility status.
The IRS updates Publication 78 data monthly, typically on the second Wednesday of each month. This means an organization that recently lost its exempt status or recently received it will appear in the updated database relatively quickly.
The absence of an organization from Publication 78 does not automatically mean your donation is non-deductible. Some categories of organizations can receive deductible contributions but are not listed.
If you cannot find an organization through the online search, the IRS recommends calling the exempt organizations helpline at 1-877-829-5500 to confirm status directly.
IRS Revenue Procedure 2011-33 explicitly provides that donors may rely on Publication 78 data to determine whether contributions are deductible. If an organization was listed when you made the donation and the IRS had not publicly announced a revocation, your deduction stands even if the organization later loses its status.
Foundations and grant-making institutions are the heaviest users of Publication 78. Before awarding a grant, most foundations verify that the recipient is listed and active. The Council on Foundations notes that grant makers can also rely on data from third-party sources like Candid (formerly GuideStar) as long as the report includes the organization's EIN, foundation status, deductibility determination, and the date the information was retrieved from the IRS database.
Use the TEOS tool at apps.irs.gov. Search by organization name, city, state, or EIN. Searching by EIN is the most reliable approach because names can vary in how they are recorded.
If a charity operates under a "doing business as" name that differs from its legal name, only the legal name registered with the IRS appears in Publication 78. You may need to ask the organization for its official legal name or look up its EIN from its Form 990 filing before searching.
Organizations that fail to file their required Form 990 annual return for three consecutive years automatically lose their federal tax-exempt status by law. These organizations are placed on the IRS Auto-Revocation List rather than remaining in Publication 78.
If a revoked organization was reinstated before your donation, it will reappear in Publication 78 with a reinstatement date. Always check the determination letter date when verifying a reinstated organization.
With deep roots in traditional finance and the digital asset industry, Acquire.Fi operates as a specialist M&A advisory firm. Coverage spans M&A, secondaries, OTC, and capital markets advisory across digital assets and frontier tech. Our team has decades of combined experience across every stage of the deal lifecycle.
.webp)