The other day I was thinking about all the programs that the Council currently maintains and I wondered if it was possible to see how much money the Council actually brings in every year. I mean, every year seems to see more programs with more fee collection opportunities for the Council, but had anyone ever added all that up?

Money, by 401K

So I got to researching. I started with the usual sources: LexisNexis, Hoovers, Dun & Bradstreet, and found very little information. Only one report by Dun & Bradstreet, who is notoriously inaccurate when dealing with privately held firms, of around $3.7M in 2016. Then I headed over to the IRS’s website to see if the Council had ever filed a form 990. This is a form filed by firms with Tax Exempt status, and can include things like revenues. Came up with nothing, which means that the Council is a for profit firm.

So I embarked on a journey to figure out what I could deduct by using information publicly available on the Council’s website. Turns out, the annual number is a lot more than $3.7M.

So what’s the number?

I could just tell you but I’ll do you one better. I did a quick and dirty (and I really mean quick and dirty) analysis using R and R Markdown and put all the code up on GitHub where anyone can pull down the repository, re-download the latest files from the Council, and re-run the analysis. Directly link to the detailed analysis here. Or, just go check it out and enjoy the whole package, and feel free to poke fun at my code in the comments below!

This post originally appeared on BrandenWilliams.com.

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