Higher Ground A Resource Center
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 273585869
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2014–2024
- Forms available
- Form 990 2024, Form 990-EZ 2013, Form 990-N 2011
- Location
- Tucson, AZ, USA
- Phone
- 5208700722
- Rating confidence
- Limited
- Sector
- Student Services, Organizations of Students
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $0
- Expenses
- $0
- Assets
- $411,761
- Liabilities
- $364,067
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
12 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Jansen Azarias (CEO)
People named in this filing
- Ramon Valadez (Board Chair)
- Ken Heeter (Board Treasurer)
- Barry Richardson (Board Secretary (ended 12/)
Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Our mission is to empower one life at a time to REACH, TRANSFORM and ELEVATE their community through love and building character.For us, Higher Ground is more than just a place, but rather, it's a culture-infusing catalyst that aims to create system-wide change, building up our high-need communities - one child and family at a time - and creating collaborative networks of support that ultimately uplift our entire city. Our vision is to inspire youth and families to be part of lasting community contribution. We want to create the momentum for lasting sustainable change in the way we develop our children and youth to redefine success as community contribution, where schools and youth organizations become places where an individual transformation leads to stronger collective impact in their own communities
What it reported doing in 2024
The Restart S.M.A.R.T. strategy, a local implementation of the community school model by Higher Ground, effectively organizes school and public resources to address specific community needs. By integrating trained staff within the school community, we provide a crucial link between community services and families facing opportunity gaps. Our collaborative approach, partnering with students, their families, and the wider community, promotes individualized success. Restart S.M.A.R.T. emphasizes evidence-based, strategic, mindful, agile, aware, resilient, and trauma-responsive decision-making in every interaction.In the year 2021-2022, we have expanded from 2 to 7 school sites across Tucson, with discussions for an 8th site in Chandler, Arizona. Our work is acknowledged as a full-fidelity implementation model of the community school strategy, with research partnerships demonstrating outcomes beyond mere attendance improvement and negative behavior reduction. In the 2021-2022 academic year, we engaged 2,083 students, collaborated with 124 groups, businesses, and organizations, worked with 300 families, and leveraged resources across our seven school communities.Our impact is evident through a 10% increase in school enrollment, a 6.11% reduction in chronic absenteeism, a 75% improvement in attendance among served students, and up to an 80% reduction in disciplinary incidents at our school sites.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- No positive adjusted resources. The filing reports no positive adjusted operating resources.
- Distribution model
- No current program activity. The filing reports no program spending for the current year.
The verdict
- The available evidence is not sufficient to produce an overall rating for this filing. This is not a warning sign.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: NotEnoughData
- Transparency & Controls: 80
- Accountability: 82
- Sustainability: 1
- Growth: 60
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: Limited
- Program expense ratio: Limited
- Fundraising efficiency: Limited
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 88.9%; rating input score 89; 9th percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Limited
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 4 of 7 controls in place; rating input score 57
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Fail
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Missing
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: Limited
- Total-asset coverage ratio: Limited
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.88; rating input score 7; 7th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: Limited
Growth
- Program expense growth: -8.7% per year; rating input score 0; 31st percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 1.2% per year; rating input score 100; 65th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 23.3% per year; rating input score 100; 93rd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: Financial trends and filed revenue, expense, asset, and liability detail
- Governance: 10 of 10 board members independent · 4 of 7 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 12 people listed
- Consistency: 12 of 13 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 4 filed schedules
- Filing history: 11 filing years from 2014 to 2024
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 1 filed money-flow record
- Related organizations: Filed and resolved organization relationships.
- 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.
- Staff and benefit plans: Retirement and health plans the organization files with the Department of Labor, and the people in them.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 7/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 6 not reported.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Series filing activity did not reconcile in the filed values.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.