Nonprofit sector big and growing

The nonprofit sector is big, getting bigger, and dominated by big organizations and the health and education fields, and it has been whipsawed by big swings in charitable giving over the past decade, a new report says.

The U.S. was home to more than 1.4 million nonprofits in 2010, up 19 percent from 1999, a total that included more than 1 million public charities, says the Nonprofit Sector in Brief, a highlight of trends from The Nonprofit Almanac 2011, which was prepared by the National Center for Charitable Statistics at the Urban Institute.