Elbow Room
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 810976299
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2020–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2019
- Location
- Portland, OR, USA
- Phone
- 6266641342
- Rating
- 92
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Arts, Culture, and Humanities N.E.C.
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $144,563
- Expenses
- $169,284
- Assets
- $32,058
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
6 people listed
People named in this filing
- Nicholas Quinn Gancedo (CoDirector)
- Malcolm Hecht (CoDirector)
- Katherine Savastano (CoDirector)
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
Elbow Room is a community art studio and gallery focused on providing workspace, material support, mentorship, and meaningful exhibition and collaboration opportunities for artists with intellectual and developmental disabilities. We center the individual interests, needs, and goals of the artists we work with, and maintain an inclusive space for individuals and groups to develop an artistic practice and a shared creative community.
What it reported doing in 2025
Gallery Program - Our gallery program is dedicated to creating exhibition, sales, and career opportunities for participating artists in Elbow Room's studio program. Elbow Room supports the careers of roughly 30 disabled artists. Our physical space hosts a small white walled gallery where we host innovative exhibitions and events. This year we were able to host two public exhibitions in our gallery as well as a massive holiday sale and open house in our studio. This year we were able to pay staff for the first time to host open gallery hours outside of our opening/closing events. We also sought out, found, and facilitated opportunities for artists in the broader arts community both locally and beyond Portland. Work by Elbow Room artists was placed in numerous outside exhibitions, including exhibitions in Philadelphia and New Jersey, and some newer artists to the program saw their work exhibited for the first time. Elbow Room staff tabled with artwork at various local events and for the second year in a row we were able to represent our artists in the Portland Institute of Contemporary Art's Time-Based Art festival. We were able to generate thousands of dollars in sales for 30 different disabled artists. Additionally, for our artists who make music, we were able to record and release two albums. Additionally, we expanded our online sales and began systematically putting work up for sale on our webstore. Included in the figure listed here are half the cost of our rent (June-December), which pays for our archive and gallery space, as well as the cost of framing, promotional materials, and gallery infrastructure. When we sell work on behalf of artists they split profits with Elbow Room according to a contract similar to (but more favorable than) typical gallery contracts. Revenue going to directly to Elbow Room from art sales is put back into services and used to support our art supply budget for the studio program. The figure included here includes artist payments, half the cost of our space rental, which houses our archive and gallery and makes exhibitions and sales possible, our expenses for exhibitions and music production (including framing and printed materials), and one third of our personnel costs (our employees spend approximately one third of their time on exhibitions and seeking opportunities for our artists).
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 75% 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
STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Expenses are high relative to revenue and total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 92
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 10
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 97.1%; rating input score 97
- Program expense ratio: 82.9%; rating input score 83
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -17.1%; rating input score 8; 8th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.19; rating input score 18; 18th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 38.7%; rating input score 9; 9th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 46.7% per year; rating input score 100; 90th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 42% per year; rating input score 100; 94th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 26.3% per year; rating input score 100; 83rd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 97.1% of revenue deployed · 82.9% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 3 filed program accomplishments · $140K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 6 people listed
- Consistency: 6 of 6 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 6 filing years from 2020 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 6 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 — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 8/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 18/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 9/100.