Big Thought

What it reported doing in 2024

At Big Thought, we believe that all youth have innate greatness. Our North Star is that all youth are equipped to imagine and create their best lives and world. Driven by our mission to make imagination a part of everyday learning, Big Thought is a social impact enterprise that focuses on youth development by preparing young creators with the skills and resources they need for the 21st century workplace. We exist to empower and equip youth to Create Great we're creating creators. At Big Thought, we provide the space and agency to support young creators through our programs and partnerships, which are powered by our dedicated research and development team that enables us to design high quality evidence-based programs, measure our impact, and expand our reach.Throughout our 30+ year history of innovation, Big Thought has become an award-winning national model in arts education, out of school time systems, summer learning and juvenile justice intervention. Now, we're one of six community partnerships in the U.S. helping scale national best practices in social and emotional learning.At our core, we empower youth to build their creative muscle, develop social and emotional skills and wellbeing and create their authentic voice.Big Thought implements three approaches to deliver this work:1. Direct to youth programs. We develop and deliver high quality curriculum and programs to serve communities with the greatest need. Big Thought programs reach on average over 4,000 students for more than 443,000 learning hours annually.2. Learning Systems - We do this by strategically connecting partners and resources across the city to create learning systems that address these themes. Big Thought Learning Systems reach on average over 20,000 students for more than 2.1 million learning hours annually.3. Powered by Big Thought, Big Thought Institute (BTI) - is an innovative partner that enables organizations to expand their capacity to build creativity, develop 21st Century skills, and deliver unique learning experiences. BTI provides professional learning, consulting, design and research-based services to empower our clients to effectively teach, develop and create. We leverage evidence-based best practices in creativity and learning systems that have been established over 30 years. BTIs client services impact adults who impact youth, engaging with an average of 10,000+ adults and having an indirect impact on hundreds of thousands of youth.How we implement these programs is what makes us uniquely effective. The Big Thought team and partners are able to achieve success in our community through our social and emotional focus, experiential learning, community-centered partnerships, equity lens and future focus.Big Thoughts unique approach comes alive in the following implementations: Weve positioned youth as equal partners in geographic/local expansion of Big Thought direct-to-youth programs so that these systems are more effective, and programs are established with a racial equity lens. We raise awareness of creativity as a workplace skill and advocate to embed creativity in human capital development institutions. We scale best practices to key institutions and systems through consulting, technical assistance, professional development and curriculum design while enabling youth to directly share their stories and perspectives with decision-makers.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
• Program expense ratio: 83.7%; rating input score 84
• Fundraising efficiency: $14.14 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 49; 49th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 93.8%; rating input score 94; 20th percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 2 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 33
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Missing
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Missing
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Pass
  • Board or committee approval: Pass
• 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; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 9 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 100
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: Pass
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -31%; rating input score 4; 4th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.17; rating input score 5; 5th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 1.36; rating input score 2; 2nd percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 9.2%; rating input score 32; 32nd percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 3.3% per year; rating input score 100; 30th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -0.8% per year; rating input score 0; 9th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: -6.7% per year; rating input score 0; 3rd percentile among comparable filings