Penn Soil Rc&d Council

What it reported doing in 2025

Economic development: we accepted new requests for assistance from a volunteer senior citizen group to replace a deteriorating functional greenhouse at the warren state hospital where the volunteers were planting seeds and producing starter vegetables and flower plants for sale to the community to raise funds in support of donations to other community non-profit organizations in warren county. Their lease on the old state-owned facility was terminated due to structural deficiencies and we are now actively developing project narratives and a budget plan to solicit funding to build a new greeenhouse facitlity at a local senior citizen residential facility within the county to enable the group to continue to serve the community needs. We also began a project to provide assistance to the meadville area recreational gardens to create a new urban farming enterprise to grow fresh food within the city of meadville and submitted a federal grant proposal to create an on-the job training program for a new and beginning farmer to provide nutritcious locally grown fresh fruits and vegetables for residents of meadvilles low-income, low access food areas by launching the first urban farming operation within the city. Like many communities, meadville and crawford county need new farmers entering the field producing good fresh produce, and selling through local markets, like the meadville market house, edinboro market, and other regional farmers markets. A committed partner in the project is the meadville market house. The market house serves an estimated population of 85,000 residents of crawford county including 13,000 residents within the city of meadville with 18% of residents below the poverty line. The market house is the oldest, continuously operating farmers market in the state of Pennsylvania and connects farmers and growers with the surrounding communities to offer locally produced food products. The market house has committed to serving as an outlet for a new farmer at the marc town farm, offering indoor market space and cold storage as well as space in their weelkly farmers market that runs may-october. As an outlet the accepts supplemental nutritional assistance payments (snap), the outlet that the market house presents will be critical for the distribution of local produts grown by the new farmer at the marc town farm to low-income households in the community to supplement their grocery budget and afford nutritious food essential to good health and well-being. We also served as a fiscal agent for the toy shoppe of warren, pa senior citizen volunteers who produced 1800 handmade wooden toys and distributed them free of charge to disadvantaged families and childrens service providers in our region with funding suppport through grants and donations we received for the project. We also provided $5000 in funding for modernization of the wood shop tools used by the toy shoppe volunteers and purchased materials necessary to create the toys they are providing to underprivileged children and children service providers. We also provided $6500 for site improvements for the annual kinzua heritage festival. The kinzua heritage festival has been registered in pa as a domestic non-profit corporation since 2009 and this festival marked the 19th year of the organization hosting this annual festival that has drawn tens of thousands of public visitors to this unique event in warren county with attendance totals exceeding 3,000 in 2024.

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 29%; rating input score 29
• Program expense ratio: 38.1%; rating input score 38
• Fundraising efficiency: Limited

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 88.9%; rating input score 89; 6th 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: 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: Missing
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 23.8%; rating input score 75; 75th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.2; rating input score 46; 46th 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: -12.2% per year; rating input score 0; 9th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: -5% per year; rating input score 0; 9th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: -3.1% per year; rating input score 0; 13th percentile among comparable filings