Beacon Media
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 933138185
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2024–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025, Form 990-EZ 2023
- Location
- Hilsborough, NC, USA
- Phone
- 9198693080
- Rating
- 78
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Alliance/Advocacy Organizations
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $428,012
- Expenses
- $313,641
- Assets
- $237,120
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
7 people listed
People named in this filing
- Justin Clayton (Director)
- Akilah Ensley (Director)
- Mike Figueras (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. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
To promote public education, we will partner with existing media outlets across platforms to share the ideas and voices of those advocating for a more equitable democracy throughout North Carolina. Beacon Media aims to make these ideas and supporting information more available and accessible in communities where the media predominantly represents other viewpoints or limits information that citizens should be able to access. We will also syndicate other forms of stories and content related to our mission to inform rural and exurban area communities through local media outlets. In addition, Beacon Media will conduct an educational program for grassroots and other community leaders whose important voices are underrepresented in mainstream media and other public fora. Beacon Media will provide such persons training and workshops to help them develop better written and oral communication skills so that they become better public advocates for their ideas and communities.
What it reported doing in 2025
Beacon Media's Radio + Digital initiative (social media and digital channels coupled with radio syndication) goes beyond the typical digital-only approach to ensure that our content and voices reach underserved audiences at the community level. This strategy across North Carolina offers a significant opportunity to reach underserved and under-communicated audiences, including rural, Latino, Black, and working-class communities, and present a vision for a more inclusive democracy. In 2025, Beacon began brainstorming for a new Radio + Digital show partnership with two young mayors from Western North Carolina, Preston Blakely and Dalton George. Both are excellent examples of the kinds of leaders and trusted messengers who Beacon Media is building around to ensure those who have the most at stake in our democracy have the platform and support to tell their stories directly and persuade new and often disengaged audiences that they, too, have a stake in our collective future. We began pre-production work and developed a partnership for a podcast called Do You Even Live Here? to deliver vital storytelling to rural audiences in Western North Carolina and grow and develop these key voices. We also continued progress on our El Faro Radio + Digital initiative, serving North Carolina's diverse, widespread Latino community in English and Spanish across the state. Beacon Media's Spanish and English-language Latino community media initiative, El Faro, has gained considerable momentum and began to develop key relationships and shift narratives beginning in the fourth quarter of 2025. The project, which is primarily social media-first across channels and is working to build into a regular podcast and grow its audience through a more robust social media presence, is designed to meet the urgent information needs of Latino communities across North Carolina.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Grant-funded. 71% of the money available for current operations came from government grants.
- 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 - The filed numbers largely add up and a large share of total spending goes to programs. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 64
- Transparency & Controls: 92
- Accountability: 82
- Sustainability: 64
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 58.6%; rating input score 59
- Program expense ratio: 79.9%; rating input score 80
- Fundraising efficiency: $11.72 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 41; 41st percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 4 of 7 controls in place; rating input score 57
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Fail
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Missing
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 26.7%; rating input score 78; 78th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.76; rating input score 34; 34th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 77; 77th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 73.8% per year; rating input score 100; 97th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 78.5% per year; rating input score 100; 99th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 67.4% per year; rating input score 100; 97th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 58.6% of revenue deployed · 79.9% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 7 of 7 board members independent · 4 of 7 filing controls reported
- Programs: 3 filed program accomplishments · $251K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 7 people listed
- Consistency: 42 of 42 current checks pass
- Schedules: 4 filed schedules · includes major donors
- Filing history: 2 filing years from 2024 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: Resolved incoming and outgoing counterparties from filed money flows.
- Related organizations: Filed and resolved organization relationships.
- 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.
- Review — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 59/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 6 not reported.
- Moderate — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 41/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 34/100.