21St Century School Fund
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 522139122
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2010–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025
- Location
- Washington, DC, USA
- Phone
- 2027453745
- Rating
- 72
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Community Improvement, Capacity Building N.E.C.
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $549,620
- Expenses
- $693,220
- Assets
- $168,496
- Liabilities
- $38,031
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
5 people listed
Highest reported compensation
- MARY FILARDO (Executive Dir.): $124,337 total reported compensation
- SEAN O'DONNELL (Director): $100,102 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
The 21st century school fund 21csf was founded on the premise that communities are responsible for creating healthy, safe, and educationally appropriate learning environments for their children. The mission of 21csf is to build the public will and capacity to improve public school facilities.
What it reported doing in 2025
21st century school fund provides technical assistance to states, districts, and nonprofits for research, data analysis, and writing, as well as communications and other support for public engagement in the areas of education planning for facilities, enrollment, and education improvement. A major aspect of this technical assistance is that the 21st century school fund provides technical assistance to the national center on school infrastructure, a u.s. Deptartment of education funded initiative, and to the national council on school facilities, an association for state facilities officials.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Earned-program. 99% of the money available for current operations came from fees and other program revenue.
- Distribution model
- Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.
The verdict
SUPPORTED - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered and expenses are high relative to revenue.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 75
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Accountability: 63
- Sustainability: 10
- Growth: 80
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 91.1%; rating input score 91
- Program expense ratio: 72.2%; rating input score 72
- Fundraising efficiency: Limited
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 90.9%; rating input score 91; 10th percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Limited
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 1 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 12
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Fail
- Whistleblower policy: Fail
- Document-retention policy: Fail
- CEO compensation review process: Limited
- Other executive compensation review process: Fail
- Form 990 shared with the board: Fail
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Missing
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -26.1%; rating input score 5; 5th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.24; rating input score 13; 13th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.23; rating input score 23; 23rd percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 32.4%; rating input score 7; 7th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 0.8% per year; rating input score 100; 18th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 1.4% per year; rating input score 100; 16th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -5.3% per year; rating input score 0; 6th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 91.1% of revenue deployed · 72.2% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 4 of 4 board members independent · 1 of 9 filing controls reported
- Programs: 2 filed program accomplishments · $501K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $124K · 5 people listed
- Highest-paid contractors: 1 contractor listed · $103K reported
- Consistency: 24 of 25 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 13 filing years from 2010 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
- Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
- People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.
- Staff and benefit plans: Retirement and health plans the organization files with the Department of Labor, and the people in them.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
Grant-readiness screening is separate from the live rating, not a measure of program quality. Review the source records before making a grant decision.
- High — Accountability: Governance controls: 6 of 7 not reported.
- High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 5/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 13/100.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 7/100.
- High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 23/100.
- High — Grant Readiness: Automatic revocation: this organization had its federal tax-exempt status automatically revoked.