Learn about the nonprofit annual economic statement

Fiscal year and reporting timeline

The threshold requirement for submission is based on the City’s fiscal year, which runs from July 1 to June 30. Your nonprofit organization may produce audits on a different timeframe based on your own fiscal year, for example January to December.

If you received $1 million or more during the City’s fiscal year, you must submit your most recent audited financial statements by the reporting deadline. For example, if you performed an audit for calendar year 2024, you must post the 2024 audit by the December 2025 reporting deadline.

California Attorney General Registry Compliance

Nonprofit organizations that contract with or receive funding from the City must be registered and in good standing with the California Attorney General’s Registry of Charitable Trusts.

Organizations must maintain their status throughout the term of any agreement with the City. Nonprofits that are suspended, delinquent, revoked, or not registered are not eligible to enter into new contracts, grants, or amendments, and may be subject to payment holds until compliance is restored.

As information about Registry status is already available publicly, City contractors do not need to post verification of current status on their own websites. The City periodically conducts compliance checks regarding contractors’ good standing with the Registry. To support this, the Annual Economic Statement form you fill out includes a field for your organization’s “State Charity Registration Number.” This may also be referred to as “RCT Number” or “RCT Registration Number” within the State’s online database. Use the State’s Registry Search Tool to find your nonprofit’s listing and provide the State Charity Registration Number when submitting your Annual Economic Statement form to the City each year. State Charity Registration Numbers may change when there are changes to your organization structure, so please use the most recent number when submitting to the City.

More details can be found in this policy and procedures document regarding City Nonprofit Contractor Compliance with California Attorney General Registry of Charitable Trusts.

Audited financial statements

City ordinance requires that any nonprofit receiving at least $1 million in funding from the City and County of San Francisco in a given fiscal year to produce and submit audited financial statement for that year. See the Controller’s Office policy for submission and certain exceptions. 

Recipients of at least $1 million in federal funding may be required to produce audited financial statements as part of the “single audit” of those federal funds.

If any of these thresholds or conditions apply to your organization, you must perform an audit of your financial statements and post this audit publicly on your website. 

The City requires completion of an audit within 9 months of the close of the nonprofit’s fiscal year. If you have not completed the audit by the posting deadline for this ordinance, you must indicate the date when the audit will be completed. You must post the required information on your website as soon as the information is available to ensure compliance with this ordinance. 

If a nonprofit is required to adhere to State or Federal audit thresholds but receives less than $1 million from the City, that nonprofit is exempt from both the City’s audit policy and from the Annual Economic Statement posting requirement. A department may request this audit be submitted for department review, but the nonprofit is not required to publicly post this information as part of an Annual Economic Statement submission.

State law requires nonprofits with revenues of $2 million or more in a given fiscal year to produce and submit audited financial statements for that year. 

ProPublica and Nonprofit Explorer

ProPublica is an independent, nonprofit newsroom that produces investigative journalism. 

Nonprofit Explorer is a tool offered by ProPublica that includes summary data for nonprofit tax returns and Form 990 documents, in both PDF and digital formats. 

You can search for your nonprofit organization by using the name, keyword, or EIN of your organization. If your organization’s audited financial statements are posted on this site, you may fulfill the public posting requirement by providing a link to your ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer page on your nonprofit’s website.

Updating information

Due to new legislation amending requirements for the annual economic statement, any nonprofit contractor that received less than $1 million from the City is no longer subject to the Annual Economic Statement public posting requirements. Additionally, the new legislation changed the types of information required to be publicly posted. Given these changes, the City will re-set the “initial reporting period” for this law to fiscal year 2024-2025. The deadline for public postings for this initial reporting period is December 31, 2025, and will remain December 31 annually.

If you previously posted an annual economic statement as of December 2024, you may remove all fiscal year 2023-2024 annual economic statement materials from your website.

Moving forward, you must keep your information accurate and up to date. Do not remove historic annual economic statements from your website, as the City may audit compliance with the ordinance at various points.

You are not required to post materials for any year prior to the initial reporting period. The City’s document retention protocols may require your organization to maintain records online for up to 7 years. Use this template to organize required information on your website.

Check if you have already submitted your form.

Your updated website

You are not expected to redesign your website to comply with this new law. You may need to create a single new webpage or use an existing webpage to add this new required content.

You may use this template as an option.

Even though you may already post some or all of this information on your website, this new regulation requires that you clearly link to the documents responsive to the law within a single template on your website. 

If you do not clearly specify where responsive documents live on your website, the City may not be able to validate they are in compliance with the law and this could lead to findings for the nonprofit when the Controller's Office reviews compliance. Use the template provided and clearly indicate where specific responsive documents or information have been published on your website by linking to them on the template.