How Benefacts classifies Irish nonprofits

  1. The need for classification
  2. How Benefacts classified the organisations in the database
  3. Providing primary and secondary classification

The need for classification

Benefacts has set out to make Irish civil society organisations and their work more accessible and more comprehensible to wider publics.

Part of making the sector easier to access is classifying each organisation in the database. This has helped us to build a website that allows people to explore different parts of the sector. It also enables nonprofits to know more about their peers.

During 2015, Benefacts consulted within the sector, and developed a localised version of an internationally-recognised standard for classifying nonprofit organisations.

Benefacts has assigned each organisation to one or other of fifty-two categories, organised under twelve headings:

  1. Arts, culture, media
  2. Recreation, sports
  3. Education, research
  4. Health
  5. Social services
  6. Development, housing
  7. Environment
  8. Advocacy, law, politics
  9. Philanthropy, voluntarism
  10. International
  11. Religion
  12. Professional, vocational

How Benefacts classified the organisations in the database

To classify each organisation, Benefacts looked for evidence of what it was set up to do.

In the case of companies, we used the statement of their purpose from their Memorandum of Association (the first half of their constitution). In the case of charities, we used the statement of their charitable purpose. Where neither of these regulatory materials was available, we looked at other information about them in the public domain.

We welcome feedback on how we have classified Irish nonprofits. Contact us if you believe we have not classified your organisation correctly, or if you would like to propose improvements to the system of classification.

Providing primary and secondary classification

It can be difficult to assign only one purpose to an organisation – many nonprofits are involved in multiple activities, or their purpose bridges two categories. In these cases, Benefacts assigns a secondary classification.