How many Industrial Development Boards are there in Tennessee?

All sources

Download the original file · idb-count-method.md

Roughly 400 — 423 by the count described below, stated as “roughly 400” in the article because the register is a moving target and the argument does not turn on the exact figure. Recorded 2026-08-17.

There is no official number

No Tennessee agency publishes a register of Industrial Development Boards. The Comptroller publishes PILOT reporting, but only for boards that report. The IRS lists only the eight that file a Form 990. The Secretary of State registers IDBs as corporations, but does not categorise them as a class.

So the figure has to be counted, and the count has to state its method.

The method

Search the Tennessee Secretary of State business entity register:

https://tncab.tnsos.gov/portal/business-entity-search

Query for variations of “Industrial Development Board” — the boards are not consistently named. Real examples from the IRS filer list alone show four different constructions:

  • Industrial Development Board Of The Gallatin Tn
  • The Industrial Development Board Of The City Of Trenton Tennessee
  • The Industrial Development Board Of The County Of Mcminn
  • Industrial Development Board (Mc Kenzie, no place name at all)

Counting the union of those variations gives 423 registered entities.

The article says “roughly 400” rather than 423, because the register changes as entities are formed and dissolved, and because the point does not depend on the precise number.

What the number is and is not

It is a count of corporations registered with the Tennessee Secretary of State whose names identify them as Industrial Development Boards.

It is not a count of currently active boards. The register includes dissolved and administratively dissolved entities. The Gallatin IDB itself was administratively dissolved in 2012 and reinstated in 2013, so it would have appeared throughout.

It is not an official figure, because none exists.

Why it is still worth stating

The claim it supports does not depend on precision. The point is that hundreds of these boards are registered in Tennessee, only eight have ever filed a federal return, and of those eight exactly one filed as a 501(c)(4). Whether the denominator is 400 or 450, the numerator is one.

Anyone who thinks the count is wrong can run the same search. That is the standard being offered: not “trust this number”, but “here is how it was produced, produce a better one.”

  • usa_federal/irs_990_data/derived/tn-idb-subsections.md — the eight filers and their subsections, from the IRS Business Master File via ProPublica. Reproducible with files/bin/tn-idb-subsections.py.