Black Hills Childrens Museum
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 921575346
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2025–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2024, Form 990-EZ 2025
- Location
- Box Elder, SD, USA
- Phone
- 6057864459
- Rating
- 84
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Children's Museums
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $41,669
- Expenses
- $123,204
- Assets
- $371,215
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
6 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- JANESSA BIXEL (President)
- Mikki Gubka (Vice President)
People named in this filing
- JANESSA BIXEL (President)
- AMANDA ESTRADA (Treasurer)
- Mikki Gubka (Vice 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
By building a childrens museum, we invest in the next generation, offering a dynamic environment that supports early childhood development, family bonding, and lifelong learning.
What it reported doing in 2025
N 2025, the Black Hills Children's Museum (BHCM) made significant progress toward its mission of creating a dynamic, hands-on learning environment for children and families in the Black Hills region. This year focused on strengthening organizational infrastructure, advancing capital campaign readiness, and building momentum with community stakeholders. Key accomplishments include: Advanced Capital Campaign Readiness: Continued progress toward the capital campaign by refining case for support materials, strengthening donor strategy, and working closely with campaign consultants to prepare for major gift cultivation. Strengthened Organizational Structure: Clarified roles and responsibilities across board leadership, contracted support, and operations. Expanded the Director of Operations role to better support coordination, systems development, and campaign infrastructure. Expanded Strategic Partnerships: Deepened relationships with community leaders, local government, businesses, and regional partners. Continued collaboration with the City of Box Elder on facility planning and long-term development alignment. Refined Vision for Museum Experience: Advanced planning for museum layout, exhibits, and programming priorities, ensuring alignment with best practices in children's museums and a strong focus on play-based, educational experiences. Increased Governance and Board Development Efforts: Strengthened board engagement, clarified expectations, and began building a more sustainable governance model to support future growth. Built Operational and Policy Foundations: Developed and refined key policies and procedures to support financial oversight, fundraising, and organizational accountability, including the adoption of a Conflict of Interest Policy to ensure transparency and ethical decision-making. Maintained Strong Campaign Momentum Through Leadership Efforts: Provided consistent leadership in weekly campaign and operations meetings, coordinating across consultants, staff, and board members to ensure continued progress and alignment. Overall, 2025 has been a pivotal year of building the internal capacity, partnerships, and strategic clarity necessary to successfully launch a capital campaign and bring the BHCM vision to life. These efforts have positioned the organization for the next phase of growth, including expanded fundraising, leadership development, and project execution.
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. Revenue has declined or grown slowly and expenses are high relative to revenue.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 100
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 31
- Growth: 0
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 100%; 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: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -195.7%; rating input score 5; 5th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 3.01; rating input score 75; 75th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: Limited
- Revenue growth: -123.1% per year; rating input score 0; 1st percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -18.8% per year; rating input score 0; 11th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 100% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $123K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 6 people listed
- Consistency: 6 of 6 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- 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 — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 5/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.