Fremont Arts Council
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 911641451
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2012–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025
- Location
- Seattle, WA, USA
- Phone
- 2065477440
- Rating
- 93
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $93,951
- Expenses
- $98,429
- Assets
- $212,624
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
8 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Cindy Krafft (Vice President)
- Amber McMorrow (President)
People named in this filing
- Elisabeth Sohlberg (Member)
- Darren Linker (Treasurer)
- Jenny Carbaja (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
The Fremont Arts Council (FAC) is a Seattle-based community arts organization founded in 1979. The FAC cultivates creativity, celebration, and belonging by engaging people of all backgrounds as active participants in the arts. We produce free and low-cost public events; including the Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle's largest participatory art event, as well as May Day, Luminata, Trolloween, and Petit Troll. The FAC offers year-round workshops, artist grants, and open studio access at our home base, the Powerhouse. The FAC stewards beloved public art, the Fremont Troll. Rooted in the belief that art builds stronger communities, the FAC welcomes everyone, across backgrounds, abilities, and experience levels, to create, celebrate, and connect. The FAC engages community through free public festivals, open workshops, artist grants, and public art stewardship to cultivate a spirit of celebration where everyone is an artist.
What it reported doing in 2025
Luminata is the Fremont Arts Council's annual autumn equinox celebration, held each September at Green Lake Park in Seattle. A free, all-ages evening of light, music, and community artistry, Luminata invites the public to mark the turning of the season by filling the night with handmade luminaries, illuminated art installations, live performance, and the collective glow of hundreds of participants walking together around the lake. The event is built on a foundation of community participation. In the weeks leading up to Luminata, the FAC hosts free, drop-in lantern-making workshops at the Powerhouse, the organization's home studio at 3940 Fremont Ave N in Seattle. Open to all skill levels and requiring no registration, these workshops give community members the opportunity to craft their own luminaries to carry in the procession. In 2025, workshops ran throughout August and September, welcoming neighbors of all ages to create alongside one another. On the evening of Saturday, September 20, 2025, the Green Lake Park came alive beginning at 5:30 PM, when a lantern shop opened near the Greenlake Boat House. Community members who were unable to attend workshops could purchase a lantern on-site, with all proceeds supporting the FAC's mission and helping to keep the event free and accessible for all. At 7:00 PM, an opening performance set a festive and welcoming tone at the waterfront before the procession began. At 7:30 PM, a lead band launched hundreds of lantern-carrying participants into a luminous, approximately one-mile walk around the lake. The route began at the Green Lake Boat House and concluded at Seattle Public Theater at West Green Lake Beach, where illuminated art installations created by local artists invited the crowd to linger, explore, and celebrate together. The procession welcomed all participants; families with young children, people carrying handmade creations, costumed artists, puppeteers, and musicians, reinforcing the FAC's core belief that everyone is an artist and everyone belongs. Mobile art of any kind - puppets, costumes, lanterns, instruments - was welcome without advance coordination, keeping the event spontaneous and radically participatory. Artist grants were made available to support the creation of both stationary and processional illuminated works, making Luminata a meaningful paid opportunity for Seattle-area artists and performers. Musician grants further extended support to the performing arts community. Luminata is free to attend and designed to be inclusive across age, background, and ability. Through this event, the Fremont Arts Council fulfills its exempt purpose by providing free public arts programming, supporting working artists through competitive grants and paid performance opportunities, and offering no-cost arts education through community workshops. Luminata strengthens Seattle by transforming a beloved public park into a free, inclusive gathering space where thousands connect through shared creativity. It supports local artists through grants and paid performance opportunities, drives community arts education through free workshops, and animates the city's cultural calendar each autumn. By centering participation over spectatorship, Luminata builds social cohesion and affirms that the arts belong to everyone.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 69% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- Distribution model
- Direct operator. The filing allocates 83% 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 reported officer compensation is a large share of total spending, which may reflect staffing concentration.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 90
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 51
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 92.3%; rating input score 92
- Program expense ratio: 88.1%; rating input score 88
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: -4.8%; rating input score 35; 35th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 2.16; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 66; 66th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 8.5% per year; rating input score 100; 68th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 2.2% per year; rating input score 100; 59th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 18.9% per year; rating input score 100; 83rd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 92.3% of revenue deployed · 88.1% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 5 filed program accomplishments · $87K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 8 people listed
- Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 13 filing years from 2012 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: Resolved incoming and outgoing counterparties from filed money flows.
- 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.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 35/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.