Communities Unlimited Inc

What it reported doing in 2024

Housing, Entrepreneurship, and Community Sustainability: CU follows a holistic, community-centered housing approach with a focus on local capacity building, technical assistance, resource development, and housing preservation and development. CU staff works with their communities to create a housing taskforce, complete a comprehensive housing needs assessment, assist with strategic planning, and support the communities in grant writing. CU provided prepurchase homebuyer education and housing counseling to support individuals and families as they apply for mortgages for home purchases or loans for home rehabilitation. - Entrepreneurship - During fiscal year 2025, the Entrepreneurship Team assisted 357 clients in one-on-one engagements ranging from 25 to 100 hours of management consulting. The program served 325 business in various training events such as webinars, live workshops, and our self-paced Learning Management System. Through the Entrepreneurship team's wealth building initiative (launched in August 2022), CU is teaching business owners how to use their business as a tool for personal wealth creation. Over 144 clients committed to the program so far that includes 100+ hours of consulting and training. Business owners are taught how to grow business retained earnings that are then used strategically toward increasing the owner's personal net worth, establishing retirement accounts, securing capital or other wealth creation strategies. Community Sustainability - As FY 2025 closed, CU's Community Sustainability team worked alongside leadership teams in 152 communities, developing more vibrant, sustainable economies by leveraging local assets for long-term growth. CU's staff facilitates this process and assists by coordinating internal and external resources to address broadband access and education, healthy foods, infrastructure management and improvement, community facility development, small business development and access to financing. Within the CS team our Healthy Foods program provides technical assistance and access to resources that created connections to new market opportunities for farmers; completion of GAP/GHP certification by small-scale underserved farmers; development and/or expansion of local markets; connections between local medical providers and schools to local producers resulting in increased access to fresh produce; and expanded access to resources to meet transportation, aggregation and storage needs in unserved rural areas. The Broadband work impacts communities across all seven states of CU's service area with focus intentionally beginning in those communities where CS teammates have already established trusting relationships and leadership teams allowing for expedited opportunities. The team of broadband content experts uses an award-winning broadband planning methodology recognized through a second USDA Broadband Technical Assistance grant and partnered as a subcontractor on a third USDA BTA award in 2025. Since 2022, the team offers broadband planning, capacity building training, to ensure all homes and businesses have access to high speed Internet.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 75.3%; rating input score 75
• Program expense ratio: 82.7%; rating input score 83
• Fundraising efficiency: $269.3 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 92; 92nd percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 92.9%; rating input score 93; 10th percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 1 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 17
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Pass
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Missing
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Missing
  • Board or committee approval: Missing
• Foreign activity oversight: Limited
• Grant itemization coverage: 98.4%; rating input score 98; 30th percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 66th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 8 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 89
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 9.9%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 2.95; rating input score 74; 74th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.5; rating input score 29; 29th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 6.6%; rating input score 38; 38th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 17.9% per year; rating input score 100; 87th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 14.5% per year; rating input score 100; 86th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 16.8% per year; rating input score 100; 84th percentile among comparable filings