Financials
Where the money goes.
OpenVerdict Inc. is a small public charity with no paid staff. This page says how it is funded, what it spends on, and what it will publish. It states nothing it cannot document.
Legal and tax status
- Legal name
- OpenVerdict Inc.
- Tax status
- 501(c)(3) public charity. IRS determination issued April 2026. Contributions are tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law.
- Charity ID (EIN)
- 41-4726223
- Incorporated
- State of Tennessee, March 4, 2026
- Location
- Germantown, Tennessee, United States
- Paid staff
- None. Everyone who works on OpenVerdict is a volunteer.
- Annual filing
- Our first annual return to the IRS is due in 2027. It will be posted on this page when filed, and every year after.
The IRS determination letter and the Tennessee certificate of incorporation are available on request at openverdictofficial@gmail.com. Our registered mailing address is on the verification page.
Where the money comes from
OpenVerdict is funded by grants and by individual donations. That is the whole list. The platform is free to use and free to read, and it will stay that way.
Grants
Foundation and civic-technology grants, applied for on the strength of the platform and the case records it publishes. Every grant we receive will be named on this page.
Individual donations
Gifts from people who want the court record to stay open. Every contribution gets a written acknowledgment for tax purposes, and no goods or services are provided in exchange.
What we do not do. We do not sell advertising. We do not sell or rent personal information. We do not charge for access to a case, a record, or a verdict. No juror's argument is ranked, labelled, or promoted because of a donation.
What it is spent on
The costs of a platform like this are small and specific. Money goes to the things below, in roughly this order of size.
Infrastructure
Database hosting, the proxy that pulls federal court records from CourtListener, deployment, and analytics. This grows with the number of people reading and voting.
Court records
Transcripts and filings are public but rarely free. When a case needs pages we do not have, we buy them, so what the platform publishes is the real record.
Legal review
Review of the public-facing language that touches real defendants and live cases. We pay for this when we can. It is not optional.
Nothing on this list is a salary. If the organization ever grows enough to support staff, that will be funded by a grant made for the purpose and it will be disclosed here first.
What we publish, and when
- Our IRS annual return, on this page, within thirty days of filing, starting with the first one in 2027.
- A plain-language summary of income and spending for each completed fiscal year, alongside the return.
- The name of every grant we receive, and what it was for.
- Any change to this policy, dated, at the top of this page.
This organization was formed in 2026 and has not yet completed a fiscal year, so there is no annual report to show yet. When there is, it will be here. If you need something sooner, for a grant review or a due-diligence check, write to us and we will provide it.