Candid (formerly GuideStar) is the canonical public registry for US nonprofits. Every FFC partner charity maintains an active Candid profile, and FFC volunteer admins help them progress through the four transparency seals — Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum. This page is the operations-team runbook for that process.
The charity-facing version of this page is freeforcharity.org/guidestar-guide/ and is written for charity staff doing the work. This page is the FFC admin's coaching guide — what to check, what to require, what the gotchas are.
FFC requirement floor
FFC requires at minimum the Gold seal plus board roster and IRS determination letter uploads before completing service delivery. Charities below Gold get routed back to seal completion before kickoff.
Time budget for the charity:
- Initial run to Platinum: 2-3 hours.
- Annual refresh: roughly 30 minutes.
Part 1 — Earning the seals
Step 0 — Claim the profile
- Create a free Candid account at candid.org.
- Search by EIN. If the profile already exists, current managers must add the charity's email as an authorized updater — coach the charity through that handoff rather than creating a duplicate profile.
- Verify the charity-side contact through the email confirmation Candid sends.
Bronze Seal — starting requirement
What the charity must supply:
- Mission statement
- Address and contact details
- EIN / Tax ID
- Leadership names and titles
Admin notes: Confirm the EIN matches the intake record and the IRS Business Master File. Mismatches are an early sign of an incorrect entity record.
Silver Seal — starting requirement
What the charity must supply:
- Program names and descriptions
- Geographic service areas
- Goals and target beneficiary populations
Admin notes: The "geographic service areas" entries feed the technology- and service-directory cross-references on freeforcharity.org. Keep them accurate.
Gold Seal — FFC minimum requirement
What the charity must supply:
- IRS Form 990 (most recent year)
- Audited financial statements (when available)
- Fiscal-year financial data (revenue, expenses, assets, liabilities)
- Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion organizational data
- Board roster + IRS determination letter (FFC requirement on top of Candid baseline)
Admin notes: This is the FFC floor for full onboarding. A charity below Gold gets routed to "complete your GuideStar Gold seal first" rather than to service-delivery scheduling.
Platinum Seal — FFC preferred level
What the charity must supply:
- Quantitative impact metrics (individuals served, program outcomes, performance indicators)
- Strategic planning documents or relevant board reports
Admin notes: Platinum is the bar FFC itself holds (see Candid profile 9159614). Charities at Platinum receive the FFC widget treatment and a featured slot in the FFC partner directory.
Part 2 — Sharing the profile with FFC
After publishing the seal, Candid exposes three artefacts FFC needs in the intake record. Collect them and paste into the charity's WHMCS notes:
- Full Profile link — the authenticated view, used by FFC admins to double-check submissions.
- Public Profile link— the URL displayed on the charity's eventual FFC-delivered site and on the FFC directory pages.
- Seal Code— the embed snippet that renders the seal badge. Used on the charity's site footer (and FFC's own footer; see the GuideStar widget at the bottom of this site).
Annual refresh
Calendar a 30-minute slot every year — Q1 is the FFC convention. Refresh the most recent 990, reaffirm the impact metrics, and re-publish so the seal stays current. Lapsed seals roll back to the previous tier publicly.
Cross-references
- Charity validation gate that requires this seal: wordpress-charity-validation.
- Stage where this typically blocks delivery: wordpress-service-delivery-stages.