A New York Times article dated December 5th, 2009, says the IRS approved 99% of last year's applications for public charity status.

This claim was originally aired in the provocatively titled, Anything Goes: Approval of Nonprofit Status by the IRS, issued by Stanford University's Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society.  Could this be true?

The source document for the claim was Table 24 of the 2008 IRS Databook.  But Table 24 shows 79,236 501(c)(3) applications received and 54,969 applications approved.  54,969 is 69% of 79,236.  (The 2009 Databook shows 60% approved.)

Here is an excerpt from a letter I sent to the Stanford researchers early in 2010:

Forgive me for being blunt, but your 99% approval rate is just silly.  To arrive at your 99% figure, you excluded over 23,000 applicants found in Table 24's "Other" column.  Perhaps you did not realize these others received the same level of review as approvals and denials.  They were different only in failing to respond when asked for additional information or when told they might not qualify.  In essence, these are applicants who quit.  Excluding them when calculating the IRS approval rate is like excluding dropouts when calculating a high school's graduation rate.