Wikidata:Property proposal/Nonprofit Status

Nonprofit Status

Originally proposed at Wikidata:Property proposal/Organization

   Not done

Description	Indicating the legal and tax status of a non-profit organization (specific to served legal areas, aka. Countries). Addition to legal form (P1454). equivalent property (P1628) to nonprofitStatus from schema.org. Organizations can have multiple Nonprofit Status from different countries.
Data type	Item
Allowed values	legal Nonprofit Statuses (not legal form (P1454), not subclasses of nonprofit organization)
Example 1	Naturschutzbund Deutschland (Q516755) -> Gemeinnützig (perhaps Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868))
Example 2	The Nature Conservancy (Q1813186) -> 501(c)(3) (like in 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436), which is not a legal form)
Example 3	Max Havelaar (Q694008) -> Algemeen nut beogende instelling (perhaps algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825), which is not a legal form)

Motivation

In numerous countries the non-profit status is separated from the legal form. For example, in Germany nearly every legal form can have Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868), in the Netherlands, foundations can be for personal gains of algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825) and in the US 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436) is not a legal form, but a tax code, issued by the IRS. It's needed to distinguish and to query real Nonprofits. --Newt713 (talk) 20:45, 25 December 2023 (UTC)

Discussion

NGOgo (talk) Bogger (talk) PantherStrix (talk) PKM (talk) Jklamo (talk) Nw520 (talk) Olyammon (talk) 03:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC) Saiphani02 (talk) Jeanne Noiraud (talk) 20:34, 30 June 2024 (UTC) Laurenz Sommerlad (talk)

Notified participants of WikiProject Nonprofit Organizations,

PAC2 (talk) User:NGOgo (talk) (Focus on Non-profit-Organizations) ArthurPSmith (talk) PKM (talk)

Notified participants of WikiProject Organizations

•  Comment There is the need to create own Items for the legal statuses. Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868) and 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436) do not 100 % fit, since they are created from general Wikipedia-Articles. Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868) is an article for multiple countries, 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436) is a mixture between the status and the organizations... --Newt713 (talk) 20:59, 25 December 2023 (UTC)
•  Comment Some thoughts.
  • You do not indicate what items are valid values for your proposed property. Looking at your examples, Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868) has no instance of (P31) or subclass of (P279) statement. 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436) is a legal form. algemeen nut beogende instelling (Q1977825) is a subclass of (P279) nonprofit organization (Q163740). So it's very unclear how you intend this property to be used.
  • More broadly, it seems like you want this property to be a mashup of "legal form" and "type of nonprofit organization", both of which we could model clearly using current property legal form (Q10541491) and instance of (P31) = some subclass of (P279) of nonprofit organization (Q163740) (although you are right, we don't currently model these very well). Or do you want to make everything instance-of nonprofit organization, and use this new property to indicate which type of nonprofit?
  • I notice in passing that we have ~1500 subclasses of nonprofit organization [1]. A quick scan of these suggests that many should be instances, not subclasses, and that we have some poor modeling in our ontology. For example, we say that Tolkien fandom (Q1963025) is a nonprofit organization, because we say that it's a voluntary association (Q48204) and we also say that all voluntary associations are non-governmental organization (Q79913) and all NGOs are nonprofit organization (Q163740). Somewhere in this hierarchy something is wrong.
  • I do think you've raised a real concern that we need to address, but I am not convinced that the property you propose would solve the problem. - PKM (talk) 00:46, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

• Thank you for your follow up questions @PKM:.
  • You are right, there would be the need to create new properties for the legal statuses or to change the current ones. I changed that in the proposal. All possible values should get a instance of (P31) of "Nonprofit Status", which has to be created. It should not be used for nonprofit types like environmental organizations, but only for legal statuses in jurisdictions, that are not legal forms.
  • The Nonprofit status should not be confused with the legal form, it should clarify it. As you stated at the moment, the legal status sometimes is stated in subclasses of nonprofit organization (Q163740), sometimes in non-existing legal forms like 501(c)(3) organization (Q18325436) (not a legal form, no ELF-Code, just a Nonprofit-Status granted by the IRS...
  • This could be a part of a better modeling of NPOs. The ~1500 subclasses are not modelled well and sometimes circle themselves. But it's only a small step, the bigger step would be an encouragement of something like industry (P452). The proposed Wikidata:Property_proposal/Organization#International_Classification_of_Nonprofit_Organizations_(ICNPO) could help here.
  • The Nonprofit-Status only helps with the legal confusion and could help in cleaning up legal form (P1454) since in a lot of countries multiple legal form (P1454) can legally be a Nonprofit and a For Profit only distinguished by the tax code. Best --Newt713 (talk) 14:25, 3 January 2024 (UTC)

•  Comment I side with PKM that this is too similar to "legal form" to warrant its own prop (the distinction between "status" and "type/form" is not clear enough IMHO).
  • Eg1: you give nonprofitStatus as analog, but you may notice that it takes values from an enumeration NonprofitType that lists legal types per country, where US 501 and 507 are described as "USNonprofitType: Non-profit organization type originating from the United States".
  • Eg2 in Bulgaria NPOs come in only 2 kinds: association (Q15911314) and foundation (Q157031), which are "legal forms".
  • IMHO for the average Joe, the distinction between "code issued by the IRS" and "legal form recorded by a court" is too subtle to be of interest.
  • Having a distinct criterion to classify NPOs is useful: but for that you need to work out the hierarchy of "Non Profit Statuses/Types/Forms" more than you need a distinct property. Then we can use two values of "legal status" (in jurisdictions that warrant it), and still write queries to fetch only the NPO status/type by using the hierarchy. --Vladimir Alexiev (talk) 07:14, 4 January 2024 (UTC)

• Thanks @Vladimir Alexiev:. Nonprofit Status is not needed for every country, if it's easy like in Bulgaria. Thats why schema.org only has NonprofitType for some countries, where it defers from the legal form. Two examples I want to tackle without inflating instance of (P31) or legal form (P1454), perhaps there are better Ideas I can't come up with at the moment:
  • The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (Q655286) has the legal form of a Charitable Trust (LEI-Record), but also has the tax status of a 501(c)3. I would prefer only one instance of (P31) since it's only one organization. And I would like to minimize the use of instance of (P31).
  • I want to filter German Nonprofits that are tax-deductible for a project. In Germany every legal form can be Gemeinnützig (see Gemeinnützigkeit (Q66660868)). I.e. a foundation can be a nonprofit or used as a family holding for a company. So, without a separate Status I would need to duplicate legal forms or I would need to create "Gemeinnützige Organisation" as a instance of (P31). I don't like both options. – The preceding unsigned comment was added by Newt713 (talk • contribs) at 10:17, 4 January 2024 (UTC).
•  Not done, no consensus of proposed property at this time based on the above discussion. Regards, ZI Jony ^(Talk) 13:56, 7 March 2024 (UTC)