To begin with, I could not find much information about the operating budgets of either non-profits or corporations, but I was able to find information about advertising (and fundraising) expenditures, and the net worth of both non-profits and corporations. From these figures, one might extrapolate a kind of spending difference.
I began with a search for information about non-profits. I went to the irs.gov (www.irs.gov) website. The main page is here: SOI Tax Stats - Charitable & Exempt Organizations Statistics. SOI=Statement of Income.
There is one .pdf for 2002 statistics---the last year available online---called Charities and other Tax-Exempt Organizations. You might contact the IRS directly to ask where to find more recent information. I have requested assistance from the New York Public Library's Science, Industry, and Business Library, which is a government document repository, in locating more recent information, and will post the information below, if found.
This document states that the figures are based on sampling. "Because the data are based on samples, they are subject to sampling error.
If I'm not looking at the information wrong, figures add up like this:
251,676 returns filed 2002
Net worth of all of them was $1,038,319,287.00
Fundraising expenditures were $10,402,320.00
Therefore the average net worth is, gulp, $4,126.00.
Average fundraising expenditures were $41.00
There is also the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) . Click on Statistics. Click on State Profiles in Depth, then again. Click on New York. Or click here: http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/tablewiz/form.php?st=NY. Notice that none of these statistics list fundraising or advertising expenditures. They have what seems like a good links page, with a section for nonprofit statistics: http://nccsdataweb.urban.org/faq/index.php?category=33.
For corporations, much more recent information is available. To find advertising expenditures, I looked in the 2005 New York Times Almanac (ISBN 0143034278, pp. 347), and found figures for 2003---$245 billion or so---from Advertising Age. Online at www.adage.com, figures are already available for 2005. See them here (if the link works; you may have to register on the website, but it's free): http://www.adage.com/images/random/FactPack2005.pdf. However, here are the figures, in millions, from the NYT Almanac:
2003 245,477
2002 236,875
2001 231,300
2000 243,680
On the irs.gov page there is also a place for business statistics: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/bustaxstats/index.html. Click on corporations. Click on complete report. Scroll down to table 1 and click on 2002. Check out total returns and net income or net worth. Crunch numbers as desired.
Please let me know if you need further help.
UPDATE
I received a response from the Science Industry and Business Library, which informs me that information for more recent years is not available from the IRS. This leaves the question of where Advertising Age obtained its figures.
Here is their response:
A search of the Catalog of United States Government Publications (print, and AccessGPO website http://www.access.gpo.gov/) does not show the PDF document that you cite in your email as an item published by that agency that has been indexed by the United States Government Printing Office and made available to depository libraries on a regular basis.
It is a summary press release available in the 'Publications and Papers/Charities and Other Tax-Exempt Organizations' section of the SOI Tax Stats-Charitable and Tax-Exempt Organization Statistics website: http://www.irs.gov/taxstats/charitablestats/article/0,,id=97155,00.html.
Due to the delay in compiling statistics from income tax returns of this nature, 2004 statistics would not be available at this time from this agency.
We suggest that you email the Internal Revenue Service to be put in contact with the Special Studies Special Projects Economics Section Specialist who compiled the data release by filling out and submitting your inquiry using the email form at the following website: http://www.irs.gov/help/page/0,,id=13148,00.html.
