Lake Erie Labrador Retriever Rescue Inc
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 341892257
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2020–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025
- Location
- Bath, OH, USA
- Phone
- 3307306166
- Rating
- 79
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Animal Protection and Welfare
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $274,812
- Expenses
- $273,696
- Assets
- $43,950
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
9 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- STEPHEN ED NOFZIGER (President)
- David Kotte (Trustee, Vice President)
People named in this filing
- LIZ SCHWINN (Application Coordinator)
- STEPHEN ED NOFZIGER (President)
- LISA SCHINDLER (Treasurer, Trustee)
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 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
To provide rescue services for Labrador Retrievers including full veterinary care. We spay/neuter to combat breed over population and euthanasia. Educate the public about the breed and pet ownership.
What it reported doing in 2025
Our largest expense is vet care. The dogs in care are given full medical assessments and treatments, as needed. We run full blood workups, including heartworm and tick bone illness testing on all dogs we take into our care as a baseline to determining their medical status. They are spayed/neutered, updated on their vaccinations, de-wormed and started on a monthly flea/tick prevention. They will also be started on a monthly heartworm prevention, if they are heartworm negative. Heartworm positive dogs are given a multi-month heartworm treatment. In addtion, we treat any other diseases, injuries, or dental issues that our veterinarians find during examinations. This is done to prepare the dogs for sucessful adoption to their forever homes. Our organization takes in Labradors from local public animal control shelters and other humane organizations. We will place them in foster homes, not an isolated shelter. This allows us to give each dog extensive handling and training to ensure that they can be sucessfully placed in a forever home and not be returned to the rescue. Our organization also takes in some of the sickest dogs that the local public animal shelters do not have money to treat, causing most of these Labradors to be unadoptable resulting in euthanasia. That requires extra time and expense, which reduces the number of dogs we can rescue each year. However, we rescue these dogs because, otherwise they would be euthanized. LELRR placed 167 dogs in 2025 into permanent homes.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 73% 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
SUPPORTED - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 78
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Accountability: 82
- Sustainability: 37
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 84.2%; rating input score 84
- Program expense ratio: 84.5%; rating input score 85
- Fundraising efficiency: $5.93 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 25; 25th percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 90.9%; rating input score 91; 15th 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: Fail
- Document-retention policy: Pass
- 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: 0.4%; rating input score 37; 37th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.16; rating input score 10; 10th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 77; 77th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 19.8% per year; rating input score 100; 83rd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 19.7% per year; rating input score 100; 86th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 10.7% per year; rating input score 100; 65th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 84.2% of revenue deployed · 84.5% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 9 of 9 board members independent · 4 of 7 filing controls reported
- Programs: 3 filed program accomplishments · $231K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 9 people listed
- Consistency: 17 of 18 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 6 filing years from 2020 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: Fundraising efficiency scored 25/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 6 not reported.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 37/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 10/100.