California Center for Movement Legal Services
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 923242519
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2024–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025
- Location
- Oakland, CA, USA
- Phone
- 5102555326
- Rating
- 75
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Human Services
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $1,664,731
- Expenses
- $1,657,679
- Assets
- $364,379
- Liabilities
- $105,326
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
9 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Christina Livingston (Former President)
- Claudia Medina (President)
Highest reported compensation
- Leah Simon-Weisberg (Executive Dir.): $185,866 total reported compensation
- Margaret DeMatteo (Directing Attorney): $132,639 total reported compensation
- Jackie Zaneri (Director): $29,130 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy creation, implementation and enforcement of policy won through community organizing.
What it reported doing in 2025
The California Center for Movement Legal Services (Movement Legal) provides legal services in the pursuit of improving the lives of California's traditionally underserved residents, carrying out legal work that fosters community led policy creation and enforcement of policy won through community organizing. Our lawyers craft legislation at the behest of community organizing, bring impact cases out of grassroots campaigns, and defend the tenant movement and its organizers. Over the last year, our team at California Center for Movement Legal Services wrote stronger tenant protections to be passed at the local level. We fought in the courts to prevent large corporate landlords from circumventing these same protections. Campaigns for stronger protections included: collaborating with tenant organizations and the City of Richmond to implement the city's rental inspection program, fighting an amendment to Oakland's tenant protection ordinance that would have passed wast collection costs onto tenants, writing language to ban ratio utility billing services in local ordinances, writing tenant protection ordinances for ballot measures in San Pablo, Redwood City and Santa Barbara. Impact litigation cases included: fighting landlords leveraging tenants' immigration status to evict them or raise the rent, suing Livable for engaging in illegal ration utility billing, suing landlords for price-gouging rents following the LA 2025 fires, fighting landlords that create hostile living environments as a business practice. Additionally, we expaned our eviction defense services in Los Angeles by doubling our LA team's staff.
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 96% 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 - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and expenses are high relative to revenue.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 74
- Transparency & Controls: 75
- Accountability: 83
- Sustainability: 22
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 77.7%; rating input score 78
- Program expense ratio: 78%; rating input score 78
- Fundraising efficiency: $13.45 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 44; 44th percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: 1 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 17
- Compensation committee: Missing
- Independent consultant: Missing
- Other Form 990s reviewed: Missing
- Written employment contract: Missing
- Compensation survey or study: Missing
- Board or committee approval: Pass
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: 100%; rating input score 100; 78th percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 80%; rating input score 80; 21st percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 7 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 88
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Pass
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: Pass
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Fail
- Independent financial-statement audit: Pass
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 0.4%; rating input score 32; 32nd percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.22; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.29; rating input score 20; 20th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 21%; rating input score 15; 15th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 99.3% per year; rating input score 100; 99th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 62.1% per year; rating input score 100; 97th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 31.2% per year; rating input score 100; 90th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 77.7% of revenue deployed · 78% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 4 of 5 board members independent · 7 of 8 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $1.3M in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $186K · 9 people listed · 1 of 6 pay-setting controls reported
- Consistency: 28 of 28 current checks pass
- Schedules: 7 filed schedules · includes major donors, grants, and executive pay
- Filing history: 2 filing years from 2024 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 5 filed money-flow records
- Related organizations: 2 filed related-organization links
- 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.
- Staff and benefit plans: Retirement and health plans the organization files with the Department of Labor, and the people in them.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- Moderate — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 44/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 32/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 11/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Audit committee oversight not reported.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 15/100.
- High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 20/100.