Music for Life International Inc

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
270865321
IRS 990-EZ coverage
2010–2025
Forms available
Form 990 2016, Form 990-EZ 2025
Location
New York, NY, USA
Phone
6463452786
Rating
34
Verdict
REVIEW
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Singing, Choral

Official website

Reported finances

Revenue
$2,991
Expenses
$4,030
Assets
$2,198
Liabilities
$23,203

Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

9 people listed

People named in this filing

  • Mark Kuss (Director, Treasurer, and Interim Chairman)
  • Palliath George Mathew (Artistic Director)
  • Louise Schulman (Director)

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

Music for Life International Inc. was created to conceive and present musical concerts and related events to promote the awareness of significant international humanitarian crises and other public interest issues in the United States and throughout the world. The net proceeds from its humanitarian concerts at Carnegie Hall and other venues are contributed to organizations directly addressing these crises and issues.

What it reported doing in 2025

In Fall 2020, we created a new grant-making program, the "Partner-In-Spirit" Grants to support individual musicians, arts professionals and arts institutions who have been hard hit by the COVID-19 pandemic in local communities in New York and New Jersey. In 2022, we continued this grant making program with one additional grant to MOSSO -Musicians of the Springfield Symphony Orchestra, Springfield MA who were in dire financial need for the continuation of their musical programs. We have continued planning new programs to provide an instrumental music education program for underserved children and youth in New Jersey. In 2023 and 2024 no new grants were disbursed. We anticipate continuing to make grants in the future. In 2023, we laid the groundwork for a music education program for these children and youth in New Jersey and the region. We secured some instruments and teachers for this program in calendar year 2024. We have also begun planning a return to our large- scale humanitarian concert projects in 2025-2026. Our Artistic Director had to have open heart surgery in the second half of 2024 and most of our program activities planned for 2024-2025 were delayed to 2025-2026. We have restarted our planning activities in 2025-26 for major artistic events in 2027 and beyond

Operating model

Revenue model
Donor-supported. 100% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
Distribution model
No current program activity. The filing reports no program spending for the current year.

The verdict

REVIEW - The filed numbers largely add up. 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: 0
  • Transparency & Controls: 82
  • Sustainability: 24
  • Growth: 0

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 0%; rating input score 0
  • Program expense ratio: 0%; rating input score 0

Transparency & Controls

  • Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
  • Major donor itemization: Limited

Sustainability

  • Operating margin: -34.7%; rating input score 16; 16th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.55; rating input score 33; 33rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 10.56; rating input score 1; 1st percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: -14.1% per year; rating input score 0; 24th percentile among comparable filings
  • Revenue growth: -11.6% per year; rating input score 0; 23rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: -10.7% per year; rating input score 0; 17th percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 0% of revenue deployed · 0% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: Filed governance answers
  • Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment
  • Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 9 people listed
  • Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 3 filed schedules
  • Filing history: 14 filing years from 2010 to 2025
  • Contacts: How to reach this organization
  • Money network: 3 filed money-flow records
  • 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 0/100.
  • High — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 0/100.
  • High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
  • High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
  • High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 16/100.
  • High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 33/100.
  • High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 1/100.
  • Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.