by Brandon Roberts
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The leaders of Harvard, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the University of Pennsylvania were brought in when Congress held hearings in December 2023 to look into allegations of school hatred. At the same time, ProPublica’s Volunteer Explorer got floods of traffic to websites for all three institutions. Visitors to the university’s website reached a record high when the same parliamentary committee held additional hearings in April and appointed former Columbia University president Nemat Shafik as the result of those hearings.
When The New York Times published an article in August about the CEO of GLAAD’s style of lavish spending, including leisure travel and home business repairs, we noticed a matching rise in traffic to the site for the group’s money. It was the most popular business on the website for two nights straight. GLAAD spokesperson Rich Ferraro defended the group’s spending, saying the journeys were business expenses that furthered the group’s advocacy goals and the company improvements aided the CEO’s some on-camera appearances.
Folks turn to Nonprofit Explorer to check a nonprofit’s finances when the information about it breaks, which is a style we’ve seen before and always. Now, we’re adding a new feature, called Trending Nonprofits, to identify those businesses that may be in the information or become getting shared a lot on social media. The feature, which will be available on the Volunteer Explorer pages, lists the eight nonprofits with the most unique views and will be updated frequently.
Some companies ‘ inclusion on the list is attributed to strong temporary traffic increases brought on by recent news events, but longer-term trends also appear. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, was the most-viewed volunteer for most of July thanks to ongoing monitoring that dug into its controversial Project 2025 handbook, including ProPublica’s personal discharge of Project 2025 training videos. A comment request was not received by the group.
The Stephen Siller Tunnel To Towers Foundation, a nonprofit that is renowned 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, is the most frequently cited organization on Nonprofit Explorer. It has been the most-viewed charity for 120 days in the past year.
The organization’s stated goal is to use donated funds to buy homes for the families of fallen military personnel and first responders. These kinds of activities are regularly listed among the top three most-visited organizations on the website because they receive media coverage. The New York Times reported that the nonprofit was the main source of income for former mayor Rudy Giuliani’s online show” America’s Mayor Live,” just as traffic to the organization’s Nonprofit Explorer page was sluggishing down in June of 2024. 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. Giuliani and the Tunnel to Towers Foundation did not respond to requests for comment.
We understand that reporters and other people frequently use Nonprofit Explorer to research organizations, so to avoid letting a small group of people put a nonprofit on the trending list, we only count individual visitors to a given organization’s page. This implies that repeated views from the same people wo n’t make a nonprofit trend.
We sincerely hope you find the feature useful as much as we do. It can send the message that a nonprofit might need to expand.
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