Austin Center for Design
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 270766722
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2010–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2022, Form 990-EZ 2025
- Location
- Austin, TX, USA
- Phone
- 7134121060
- Rating
- 82
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Vocational, Technical Schools
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $29,557
- Expenses
- $70,112
- Assets
- $8,108
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
4 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Jonathan Lewis (President)
People named in this filing
- Vicky Pridgen (Trustee)
- Mark Phillip (Trustee)
- Jonathan Lewis (President)
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
To transform society through design and design education by developing design knowledge directed towards all forms of social and humanitarian problems.
What it reported doing in 2025
Austin Center for Design embraces an educational pedagogy focused on empathy, abductive reasoning, and rapid prototyping. All of these core pillars stand upon a foundation of relevance of impact: focusing on problems worth solving.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Cannot be determined from the filing. The filing does not provide enough consistent revenue detail to tell how this nonprofit funds its work.
- 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. Expenses are high relative to revenue and program spending has declined or grown slowly.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 97
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 8
- Growth: 0
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
- Program expense ratio: 92.3%; rating input score 92
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -137.2%; rating input score 6; 6th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.12; rating input score 14; 14th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 8.6%; rating input score 10; 10th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: -2.6% per year; rating input score 0; 41st percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: -3.2% per year; rating input score 0; 39th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -2.5% per year; rating input score 0; 30th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 92.3% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $65K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 4 people listed
- Consistency: 6 of 6 current checks pass
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 9 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.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 6/100.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 14/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 10/100.