Indigenous Lenses
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 870657526
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2013–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2007
- Location
- Salt Lake City, UT, USA
- Phone
- 8015210542
- Rating
- 42
- Verdict
- MIXED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Film, Video
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $20,508
- Expenses
- $19,723
- Assets
- $19,815
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
3 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Sarah C Sifers (Executive Director)
People named in this filing
- Sarah C Sifers (Executive Director)
- Patricia Wesson (Board Member)
- Judy Keane (Board Member)
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
Organization's Primary Exempt Purpose: Indigenous Lenses is a 501(c)3, Utah-based non-profit corporation dedicated to ethnographic, documentary film and video productions for educational, cultural, and scientific purposes. Our productions will focus on indigenous healers from around the world, recording their stories within the context of their cultures. Emphasis will be placed on those healers and healing practices threatened with extinction through acculturation and/or assimilation. The corporation shall also engage in humanitarian work in the communities where we film to help bring education to the girls of those communities, provide food and shelter to indigent Tibetan elders in the refugee camps and support eye and medical care for the Nepali and Tibetan communities.
What it reported doing in 2025
Education: $5000 The cost of education for one year in Nepal is $300. This includes tuition, uniforms, text books and test fees. In a country that values boys over girls and where the annual average income is $300, the education of girls is not a high priority. Indigenous Lenses is currently paying the education for dental school for 1 girl.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 99% 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 and revenue has grown recently. 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: 7
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 52
- Growth: 60
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 6.7%; rating input score 7
- Program expense ratio: 6.9%; rating input score 7
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 3.8%; rating input score 51; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 1; rating input score 48; 48th 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: -7.4% per year; rating input score 0; 32nd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 0.4% per year; rating input score 100; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 3.3% per year; rating input score 100; 50th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 6.7% of revenue deployed · 6.9% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 2 filed program accomplishments · $1K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 3 people listed
- Consistency: 7 of 7 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 12 filing years from 2013 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.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 7/100.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 7/100.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 51/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 48/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.