Nia House Learning Center
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 942272092
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2014–2024
- Forms available
- Form 990 2024
- Location
- Berkeley, CA, USA
- Phone
- 5108456099
- Rating
- 81
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $2,028,057
- Expenses
- $1,815,608
- Assets
- $3,385,151
- Liabilities
- $279,523
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
8 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Adriana Penuela Useche (President)
- Monica Parran (Vice President)
Highest reported compensation
- Eve Uberman (Executive Dir.): $104,473 total reported compensation
- Sambo Nhey (Staff Rep): $79,266 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Nia House's mission is to bring together children from different socioeconomic backgrounds to grow and work in harmony and cooperation, and to actively work toward all of Dr. Maria Montessori's concepts, especially that of peace through education.
What it reported doing in 2024
Nia House Learning Center provided full-day, year-round Montessori education to 100 children between the ages of 18 months and 6 years old. Of these families, more than 48% at a time received financial aid in the annual amount of over $750,000 of tuition remission. Additionally, during the 2024-25 school year, Nia House prepared 15 children for successful transitions to elementary school programs, prepared parents to advocate for their children, and sent teachers detailed reports of children's strengths and challenges in their social-emotional and cognitive development. Nia House also completed evaluations of all enrolled children and made successful referrals for early intervention needs for 100% of the children identified with early intervention needs. Nia House offered individual parent teacher meetings to families of all 100 enrolled children, meeting with individual parents for over 200 hours during the 2024-25 year, and offered group parent educational meetings to all families with a total of 10 hours of group parent education offered throughout the year.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Earned-program. 73% of the money available for current operations came from fees and other program revenue.
- 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
STRONG - The filed numbers largely add up and a large share of available resources goes toward mission work. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 69
- Transparency & Controls: 92
- Accountability: 88
- Sustainability: 58
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 70.5%; rating input score 70
- Program expense ratio: 81.4%; rating input score 81
- Fundraising efficiency: $6.93 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 26; 26th percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd 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: 87.5%; rating input score 88; 19th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 7 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 88
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Pass
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: Pass
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Pass
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 10.5%; rating input score 63; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.86; rating input score 59; 59th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.08; rating input score 62; 62nd percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 10.1%; rating input score 29; 29th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 7.5% per year; rating input score 100; 53rd percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 6.6% per year; rating input score 100; 52nd percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 7.7% per year; rating input score 100; 48th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 70.5% of revenue deployed · 81.4% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 7 of 8 board members independent · 7 of 8 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $1.5M in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $104K · 8 people listed
- Consistency: 29 of 29 current checks pass
- Schedules: 5 filed schedules · includes major donors
- Filing history: 11 filing years from 2014 to 2024
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 2 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.
- Staff and benefit plans: Retirement and health plans the organization files with the Department of Labor, and the people in them.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 26/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Independent financial-statement audit not reported.
- Review — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 59/100.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 29/100.