Matthew Strother Center for The Examined Life
Legal name: Matthew Strother Foundation
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 934573086
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2024–2025
- Official website data refreshed
- Sep 2026
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025, Form 990-N 2023
- Location
- Catskill, NY, United States
- Phone
- 6124926437
- Rating
- 66
- Verdict
- SUPPORTED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Educational Services and Schools - Other
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $425,029
- Expenses
- $90,816
- Assets
- $529,945
- Liabilities
- $8,315
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
4 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- BERTA WILLISCH PINTOS (PRESIDENT)
People named in this filing
- BERTA WILLISCH PINTOS (PRESIDENT)
- STEPHEN CHARLES STROTHER (SECRETARY)
- CHERYL GRADY (TREASURER)
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
We want to foster a culture of reflection, curiosity, and depth by gathering people in meaningful and creative engagement with life’s most enduring questions. Our mission is built upon 4 Principles: ✺ Intellectual rigor We support independent learners interested in serious, sustained engagement with texts of richness, depth, and lasting value. Leslie Atkins is a professor at Boise State University whose work lives at the intersection of physics, philosophy of science, and education. Trained as a physicist, she studies how scientific concepts—light, time, energy, and information—take shape over time and how these concepts are made legible to nonscientists. Her research follows how encounters with science can reshape the ways people notice, interpret, and inhabit their everyday lives. She designs learning environments that encourage generous attention to others’ ideas, support multiple...
What it reported doing in 2025
We support independent thinkers of all ages and backgrounds by providing fully subsidized intellectual retreats in a farm in upstate New York. After a careful selection process, five students come ready to engage in depth with a text from the humanistic tradition - works of philosophy, literature, or poetry.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 100% 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 - The filed numbers largely add up and most voting board members are independent. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 35
- Transparency & Controls: 92
- Accountability: 88
- Sustainability: 82
- Growth: 60
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 13.4%; rating input score 13
- Program expense ratio: 62.6%; rating input score 63
- Fundraising efficiency: $28.21 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 63; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 5 of 7 controls in place; rating input score 71
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- 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: Fail
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 78.6%; rating input score 97; 97th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 5.84; rating input score 82; 82nd percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.02; rating input score 36; 36th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: -48.6% per year; rating input score 0; 2nd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 21.2% per year; rating input score 100; 87th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 93% per year; rating input score 100; 99th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- What they do: 1 programs and campaigns described on the official site · 1 operating location identified
- Where the money goes: 13.4% of revenue deployed · 62.6% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 3 of 3 board members independent · 5 of 7 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $57K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 4 people listed
- Consistency: 23 of 23 current checks pass
- Schedules: 4 filed schedules · includes major donors
- Filing history: 2 filing years from 2024 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- 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 13/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 7 not reported.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 36/100.