Art of Brooklyn Festival
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 453980747
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2021–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2020, Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2019
- Location
- Brooklyn, NY, USA
- Phone
- 9177551788
- Rating
- 96
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Film, Video
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $96,745
- Expenses
- $96,500
- Assets
- $6,864
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
3 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Joseph Shahadi (Executive Director)
People named in this filing
- Gina Leone (Script Contest Director)
- Joseph Shahadi (Executive Director)
- Anthony DeVito (Producing Director)
Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
The Art of Brooklyn Film Festival is an annual event that brings Brooklyns celebrated film and media makers together with their peers across the country and around the world. AoBFF is a filmmaker-focused event, platform and showcase for exciting emerging creators and established voices. We partner with film distributors and media organizations, host world-class talkbacks, create innovative programming for networking and skill building, and screen in independent theaters for enthusiastic audiences across Brooklyn. Founded by working artists in 2011, 37 festival premieres have gotten theatrical distribution to date and one became an HBO series. We have held events in 24 different venues in 13 neighborhoods across Brooklyn (so far,) partnering with local businesses and organizations to reach the widest possible audience.
What it reported doing in 2025
We invited filmmakers Eden Martinez to curate Narrative Shorts, Daniel Feighery to curate Docs and Derek Garcia for Narrative Features. We held film screenings at AbleCine in Industry City Brooklyn, Film Noir Cinema, 100 Sutton event space, and Stuart Cinema (all in Greenpoint Brooklyn). We also produced free outdoor screenings on Fulton Street Brooklyn. We created over 60 videos (filmmaker, interviews, promotional trailers) for social media. We screened 55 new films in person for diverse audiences from NYC and beyond, and also streamed them online for audiences across the US using the Eventive Virtual Festival Platform. We held Screenplay Competitions with industry prizes including seminars from Roadmap Writers, consultations with film producers, and AoBFF passes.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Mixed. Its operating money came from several sources; no one source provided a clear majority.
- 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
STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Some filed totals do not add up and total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 100
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 25
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 99.7%; rating input score 100
- Program expense ratio: 100%; rating input score 100
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 0.3%; rating input score 45; 45th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.07; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 45.8%; rating input score 4; 4th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 1.8% per year; rating input score 100; 53rd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 8.2% per year; rating input score 100; 77th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 38.7% per year; rating input score 100; 92nd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 99.7% of revenue deployed · 100% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $96K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 3 people listed
- Consistency: 5 of 6 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 5 filing years from 2021 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 5 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.
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.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Part I part ii net assets crosscheck did not reconcile in the filed values.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 11/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 45/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 4/100.
- High — Grant Readiness: Automatic revocation: this organization had its federal tax-exempt status automatically revoked.