Privacy Law Scholars Foundation
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 471968890
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2015–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2018
- Location
- San Francisco, CA, USA
- Phone
- 4156611661
- Rating
- 89
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Educational Services and Schools - Other
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $42,211
- Expenses
- $54,138
- Assets
- $93,589
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
6 people listed
People named in this filing
- Kirsten Martin (Director)
- Ari Ezra Waldman (Chairman)
- Kate Weisburd (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-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
To serve as the world's premier academic incubator for rigorous, interdisciplinary legal scholarship. The foundation fosters collaboration among privacy law scholars, policymakers, civil society advocates, and technology practitioners to workshop, critique, and advance emerging research at the intersection of information privacy law, data protection policy, and technology.
What it reported doing in 2025
The foundation successfully organized and executed the annual Privacy Law Scholars Conference (PLSC). This flagship event facilitates intensive, peer-led workshops designed to critique in-progress manuscripts on privacy, surveillance, Artificial Intelligence, and technology law.Active Workshop Format: Bypassed traditional panel presentations by utilizing dedicated expert discussants to introduce papers, ensuring deep, constructive participant feedback.Interdisciplinary Reach: Convened an international assembly of legal academics alongside scholars from computer science, critical race studies, information studies, and sociology.Early-Career Mentorship: Facilitated dedicated mentorship pre-conferences and junior scholar workshops to directly support pre-tenure researchers and advance equity within the technology law pipeline.Scholarly Excellence: Administered the peer-reviewed Reidenberg-Kerr Award recognizing outstanding research contributions from rising, pre-tenure legal scholars
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Cannot be determined from the filing. The filing does not provide enough consistent revenue detail to tell how this nonprofit funds its work.
- 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 - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Expenses are high relative to revenue and reported officer compensation is a large share of total spending, which may reflect staffing concentration.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 100
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 33
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
- Program expense ratio: 99.7%; rating input score 100
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -28.3%; rating input score 18; 18th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.73; rating input score 62; 62nd percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 19.9% per year; rating input score 100; 81st percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 12.4% per year; rating input score 100; 83rd percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 12.5% per year; rating input score 100; 75th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 99.7% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $54K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 6 people listed
- Consistency: 6 of 6 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 9 filing years from 2015 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 — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 18/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.