Icma

What it reported doing in 2024

To advance our goals of ensuring future-ready leaders and positioning icma as a thought leader, we continued to focus on creating more engaging content to attract members and their staff and expand our outreach on priority topic areas. Examples include:- in january 2025, icma relaunched the academic matters newsletter, featuring articles from academics and managers who teach. With more than 1,700 subscribers, this monthly e-newsletter provides readers with perspectives, advice, and information from the icma graduate education committee, authors, professors, and other experts in the field.- in april 2025, icma launched the icma smartbrief on public safety, a weekly e-newsletter focusing on the key trends, news, emerging technologies, and government regulations that impact the public safety sector.- in april 2025, in collaboration with the national association of county administrators, icma launched its second county management edition of pm magazine, to amplify the voices of county professionals globally. - in june 2025, icma published the manager evaluations guide, a handbook providing local government managers and their elected bodies with tools and resources to support their evaluation process.with funding from the gates foundation, icma awarded more than $600,000 in small grants to support economic mobility and opportunity-centered assessments, outreach initiatives, plans, pilot programs, and other activities in 30 cities and counties.icma also organized the first national economic mobility and opportunity conference, held in baltimore, Maryland, in june 2025, with more than 350 attendees.in november 2024, the gates foundation awarded icma a new $10.5 million grant to help local governments build their internal capacity to develop and implement new economic mobility and opportunity programs, policies, and partnerships. Icma is awarding substantial subgrants to 16 communities, enabling them to hire special assistants to work alongside city or county management. The grants also provide funding for community engagement processes, interns, training, technical assistance, and project implementation.icma helped to improve local government planning, zoning, permitting, inspection, community engagement, and financing of solar energy projects through two projects funded by the u.s. Department of energy.- over the course of the solar@scale program, which ended in july 2025, icma and the american planning association trained more than 3,528 local government professionals on large-scale solar development.- through the solsmart initiative, icma helps local governments with best practices to expand solar energy use in their jurisdictions. The program awarded 30 new communities the solsmart designation, bringing the total to almost 600.- with a subcontract from the interstate renewable energy council, icma is supporting a project to help local governments with effective strategies for developing electric vehicle charging infrastructure.- in 2023, icma was awarded a contract to support rural communities with effective policies and practices to effectively site and develop distributed wind energy systems. The project was paused by the u.s. Department of energy (doe) in april 2025.through the thriving communities technical assistance center, funded by the u.s. Environmental protection agency (epa), icma provided direct support to over 100 communities across the united states to address environmental and energy challenges. Like many other epa-funded programs, this initiative was canceled in april 2025.icma continues to develop impactful, research-based content on local governance. Notably, in fiscal year 2025:- published future-proofing local government: essays on innovation, a compilation of essays from practitioners, researchers, and other thought leaders on evolving local government management and service delivery in line with our local government reimagined innovation framework.- icma completed the first national survey of local governmen

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 78.7%; rating input score 79
• Program expense ratio: 73.8%; rating input score 74
• Fundraising efficiency: $62.84 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 79; 79th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 62nd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 2 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 33
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Missing
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Pass
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Missing
  • Board or committee approval: Pass
• Foreign activity oversight: 2 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 25
  • Claims monitoring procedures: Pass
  • Requires narrative reports: Fail
  • Conducts field audits: Fail
  • May suspend future funding: Fail
  • Requires financial reports: Pass
  • Conducts site visits: Fail
  • Requires grant agreements: Fail
  • May require repayment: Fail
• Grant itemization coverage: 99.8%; rating input score 100; 37th percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Yes; rating input score 100

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 66th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 8 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 89
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: Fail
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -4.4%; rating input score 18; 18th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.1; rating input score 39; 39th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.44; rating input score 33; 33rd percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 7.8%; rating input score 31; 31st percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: -1% per year; rating input score 0; 8th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -1.4% per year; rating input score 0; 5th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 7% per year; rating input score 100; 49th percentile among comparable filings