Industries
Nonprofits
For-Profits
Articles
Related Guides
Citing Sources

Researching Industries

NAICS and SIC - determine the code for your industry and look at appropriate Economic Census and other reports.  If you know the National Taxonomy of Exempted Entities (NTEE) code, consult NCCS' conversion table for NAICS/SIC.

IBISWorld – Provides an analysis of each NAICS code industry in the United States, including 30 health care & social assistance industries plus museums, dance companies, theatre, and educational industries.

S&P Industry Surveys - covers industries with large publicly-held company presence such as Health Care: Facilities.

EBSCOhost Business Source Complete - search by NAICS code for industry & market reports as well as articles

Trade Associations & Local Advocacy groups - watch for links from nonprofit organization web sites and other areas.  Use Google Advanced Search to identify local organizations, limiting to nonprofit and government domains.  For example, search:  massachusetts homeless site:.org,.gov

Nonprofit books & statistical sites:

• Giving USA - HV29.A6 (Information Desk1) - Giving trends in major sectors.
• Nonprofit Nation, by Michael O’Neil - HD2769.2 .U6 O54 (Information Desk1)
• State of Nonprofit America, by Lester Salomen -  HD62.6 .S734 (Information Desk1)
• The New Nonprofit Almanac - HD2769.2 .U6 (Information Desk 1) - 1977-1998 state by state analysis including employment & financial data. Update with the next sources.
• National Center for Charitable Statistics - retrieve state statistics by NTEE code and other data.

See also Nonprofit Organizations Research Guide for more nonprofit benchmarking information.

Researching Nonprofit Organizations

GuideStar - register for free and view IRS Form 990 financials (at least 3 years) and other information for most U.S. charities.   GuideStar also provides information on how they collect 990s, a 990 tutorial and more. Professors should contact reference@babson.edu if they would like Premium access for the students.  Premium users can screen organizations by NTEE code, size and other factors. 

Charity Navigator - view ratings & comparisons of organizations.  Be sure to review their methodology.

Give.org National Charity Reports - reviews of over 50 national nonprofit organizations

Organization's web site - current information and possible annual reports

See Research: Nonprofit Organizations for more sources for benchmarking.

Researching For-Profit Companies

Capital IQ or Thomson ONE Banker - Form 10-K and annual reports plus recent M&A deals & analysts reports.

Mergent Online - company histories, joint ventures

Socrates - analysis of corporate social responsibility issues for 400 companies

LexisNexis Company Dossier - Hoovers In-depth report, corporate affiliations, intellectual property & recent articles.  Search LexisNexis Academic for more articles.

InfoTrac Business & Company Resource Center - corporate histories, chronologies & articles

EBSCOhost Business Source Complete - Company Profiles from Datamonitor plus articles.

See other article sources below.

Articles

Factiva - Search for articles in 8000 publications.
Search examples:
atleast2 massachusetts and atleast7 homeless
newman's own and atleast5 newman*
habitat for humanity and americus and atleast10 habitat

EBSCOhost Business Source Complete – search for articles on organizations of by NAICS or SIC for industries.  For local organizations, you may also want to click Choose Databases tab and search Regional Business News as well.

EBSCOhost Academic Search Premier – nonprofit topics particularly in the arts and social services.   

ProQuest ABI/Inform Complete -
Search for articles on organizations or for industries using keywords or NAICS or SIC code.  Other search examples:  microlend* or microfinan*

LexisNexis Academic
        newman! own in Headline
AND atleast5(newman!) in Article Text

Related Research Guides

Nonprofit Organizations - more sources for comparative data and researching nonprofits

Social Enterprising - sources for starting new organizations

Enterpreneurship, Society & the Environment - resources on green businesses

Business Plans Research - resources for developing a business plan