Dstl Arts
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 471509200
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2019–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2024, Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2019
- Location
- Los Angeles, CA, USA
- Phone
- 7605217018
- Rating
- 48
- Verdict
- MIXED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Arts Education
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $82,320
- Expenses
- $121,393
- Assets
- $7,882
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
5 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Luis Antonio Pichardo (Founder, Executive Director; President)
People named in this filing
- Luis Antonio Pichardo (Founder, Executive Director; President)
- Cat Vasko (Board Member, Treasurer)
- Jessica Castillo (Board Member, Secretary)
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
DSTL Arts is a nonprofit arts mentorship organization that inspires, teaches, and hires emerging artists from underserved communities. This mission is achieved through our multiple programs, including our Poet/Artist Development Program, which mentors, trains, and publishes Emerging Poet/Artists from historically marginalized communities; our Conchas y Café Bilingual Creative Writing Workshop series for adults, and its associated publication, the Conchas y Café Zine; and our annual sister publications, Art Block Zine and Aurtistic Zine. In FY2025, our organization published a total of 8 new publications and served over 1,000 individuals through live workshops, readings, and direct mentorships (digital and in-person). This is in addition to the 978 viewers of our video-recorded workshops presented online via YouTube.
What it reported doing in 2025
Our Creative Impact workshop series (a sub-program of our Poet/Artist Development Program) offered a paid Teaching Artist Residency for 1 Poet/Artist from a historically marginalized community in Los Angeles County. This program provided 4 in-person social justice-focused workshops that explored the impact of immigration on our local community, and 4 virtual workshops. This program resulted in 1 new publication featuring the artworks of our Teaching Poet/Artists, workshop participants, and LA-based artists, and 1 in-person reading with a social media-based livestream featuring select poets and artists who contributed to the publication. Approximately 300 total individuals engaged with the program either as workshop participants or audience members viewing the associated workshop recordings and readings/performances conducted as a culmination event for the workshop series. The post-program views on YouTube of all related workshops and reading recordings resulted in an additional 200+ individuals benefiting from this program.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 88% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- 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
MIXED - The filed numbers largely add up. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and a relatively small share of total spending goes to programs.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 10
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 18
- Growth: 40
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 11.3%; rating input score 11
- Program expense ratio: 7.6%; rating input score 8
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -47.5%; rating input score 13; 13th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.06; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 66; 66th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 6%; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: -10.6% per year; rating input score 0; 28th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 1.3% per year; rating input score 100; 55th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -2.4% per year; rating input score 0; 30th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 11.3% of revenue deployed · 7.6% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 4 filed program accomplishments · $9K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 5 people listed
- Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 5 filing years from 2019 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
- 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 — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 11/100.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 8/100.
- High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 13/100.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 11/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 11/100.