Free Ebook Foundation

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
611767266
IRS 990-EZ coverage
2016–2025
Forms available
Form 990-EZ 2025
Location
Montclair, NJ, USA
Phone
8626219288
Rating
84
Verdict
STRONG
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Libraries

Reported finances

Revenue
$44,359
Expenses
$37,584
Assets
$26,513
Liabilities
$2,438

Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

7 people listed

Executive titles in this filing

  • Eric Hellman (President & CEO)
  • Andromeda Yelton (Vice President)

People named in this filing

  • Eric Hellman (President & CEO)
  • Karen Liu (Secretary/Treas)
  • Andromeda Yelton (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

The Free Ebook Foundation envisions a world where ebooks will be funded, distributed and maintained for the benefit of all, by coordinating the efforts and resources of many. We are working towards sustainable ecosystem for free ebooks by making them easier to produce, more available, widely discoverable and by building systems that preserve them.

What it reported doing in 2025

In 2025, the Free Ebook Foundation, launched an initiative to provide accessible descriptions for 400,000 images in Project Gutenberg books, highlighted by production of the first accessible, public-domain ebook version of "Winnie-the-Pooh". We continued to improve Project Gutenberg's Ebookmaker software, improving the formatting, presentation, and accessibility of over 77,000 public domain ebooks. Starting in October the foundation began providing management services to Project Gutenberg. The Foundation's Free-Programming-Books repository is the fifth most popular repo on all of GitHub, reaching 10,000 commits by 3381 contributors. Unglue.it, the Foundation's ebook distribution site, distributed 4.7 million ebooks from its catalog of over 260,000 free-licenced ebooks.

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. Program spending has declined or grown slowly and total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 91
  • Transparency & Controls: 82
  • Sustainability: 51
  • Growth: 60

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 84.7%; rating input score 85
  • 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: 15.3%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.71; rating input score 39; 39th percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.09; rating input score 15; 15th percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: -10.7% per year; rating input score 0; 27th percentile among comparable filings
  • Revenue growth: 4.3% per year; rating input score 100; 67th percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: 14.7% per year; rating input score 100; 78th percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 84.7% of revenue deployed · 100% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: Filed governance answers
  • Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $38K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 7 people listed
  • Consistency: 7 of 7 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 2 filed schedules
  • Filing history: 10 filing years from 2016 to 2025
  • 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: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 39/100.
  • High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 15/100.
  • Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.