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by Brandon Roberts

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When Congress held hearings in December 2023 to investigate allegations of campus antisemitism, they brought in the presidents of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania. At the same time, ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer got surges of traffic to pages for all three universities. When the same congressional committee held further hearings in April and brought in now-former Columbia University president Nemat Shafik, traffic to the university’s page on the site peaked.

When The New York Times published an article in August about the CEO of GLAAD’s pattern of lavish spending, including luxury travel and home office renovations, we noticed a corresponding spike in traffic to the page for the organization’s finances. It was the most-viewed organization on the site for two days straight. GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro defended the organization’s spending, saying the trips were business expenses that furthered the group’s advocacy goals and the office improvements aided the CEO’s many on-camera appearances.

This is a pattern we’ve noticed again and again: When news about a nonprofit breaks, people turn to Nonprofit Explorer to check its finances themselves. Today, we’re adding a new feature, called Trending Nonprofits, to highlight those organizations that may be in the news or be getting shared a lot on social media. The feature, which will appear on the Nonprofit Explorer homepage, lists the eight organizations with the most unique views and will update multiple times per day.

Sharp temporary jumps in traffic due to breaking news events account for some organizations’ appearance on the list, but longer-term trends are also reflected. The Heritage Foundation, for example, was the most-viewed nonprofit for most of July thanks to ongoing reporting that dug into its controversial Project 2025 playbook, including ProPublica’s own release of Project 2025 training videos. The group did not respond to a request for comment.

The most consistently popular organization on Nonprofit Explorer is the Stephen Siller Tunnel To Towers Foundation, a nonprofit that’s notable for hosting large charity events like a 5K run through the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel to the former site of the World Trade Center complex. It has been the most-viewed charity for 120 days in the past year.

The organization’s stated purpose is to use donated funds to purchase homes for the families of fallen military service members and first responders. These types of activities get media coverage, which consistently puts them among the top three most-visited organizations on the site. Just as traffic to the organization’s Nonprofit Explorer page was slowing down in June of 2024, it shot back into the top position when The New York Times reported that the nonprofit was the primary source of revenue for former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s internet show “America’s Mayor Live.” According to reports, the show brought in approximately $16,000 a month for one of Giuliani’s companies, and the former mayor was accused of attempting to conceal that revenue stream in bankruptcy court. A spokesperson for Giuliani told the paper he was “proud to partner” with the charity. Neither Giuliani nor the Tunnel to Towers foundation responded to requests for comment.

We know that reporters and others often use Nonprofit Explorer to research organizations, so to avoid letting a small number of people push a nonprofit onto the trending list, we count only unique visitors to an organization’s page. This means that repeated views from the same people will not cause a nonprofit to trend.

We hope you enjoy using the feature as much as we do. It can be a great signal that it might be time to go digging into a nonprofit further.

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