Project Write Now Inc

What it reported doing in 2025

2025 was a year of connection, creativity, and growth. We gathered to celebrate our community, honored partners who make our work possible, amplified voices through live storytelling and publications, expanded writing programs across schools and communities, and reached writers of all ages-reflecting the heart of project write now: storytelling as a force for belonging, healing, and change. A big highlight of the year was coming together in october for our annual community celebration, during which we honored our community partners with awards, including senator vin gopal, educator jenny morelli, the team at two river theater, and volunteers kelly cullen, jennifer gaites, and shanda mcmanus. We also featured readers from across our programs, including sklya bicca, miliani torres, joseph serrano-olguin, grace kellett, shani love, kate cordaro, and elyse kehoe. Another major highlight of 2025 was participating in the prudential north to shore festival with our sound bytes: stories & food for the soul event, in collaboration with the city of asbury park mayor's wellness committee and featuring stories shared by ten notable asbury park residents and delicious food from ada's gojjo, cardinal provisions, and cookman creamery. Community outreach - we continued our long-standing expressive writing programs at red bank middle school and asbury park high school, culminating the year with three published anthologies of student writing and writers celebrations. With aphs, we hosted our writers celebration at the asbury book cooperative. - we brought the creative writing class from asbury park high school to monmouth university's toni morrison day. Three of our students read their original work in front of an audience of college students, professors, and staff as part of the event. - in collaboration with the two river theater's crossing borders festival, which celebrates latine playwrights, three of our young adult writers performed original pieces to kick off each staged reading. During their inaugural stories from the heart event, some of our 7th and 8th grade avid students at red bank middle school read their original pieces from their respective anthologies. - we provided in-school multi-session writing programs for grades 6 through 8 at markham place in little silver. - we provided five after-school writing clubs in red bank and asbury park. - we added a new pwn india writing club, pwn india for 8th graders, and continued our programs for children (ages 10-12); teachers (of children ages 3-6), and adults. We published a special edition of bridge ink featuring our pwn india youth writers. - we participated for our third year in a row in the New Jersey pride parade in asbury park. - we partnered with more than 30 organizations/schools to deliver our community outreach programs, including asbury book cooperative, kula urban farm, lunch break, mayor's wellness committee of asbury park, mental health association of monmouth county, our lady of mount carmel (asbury park), planned parenthood, project heal / elevate, and two river theater. Among our new partnerships are blue dot: social and community wellness, brookdale's gear up, collier group home, creating change, heartwarming center (red bank), long branch girls symposium, red bank umc youth group, red bank senior center, over the moon (asbury park), the salvation army, torch leadership academy, and the ymca (red bank). - we awarded 45 scholarship seats to youth and adults, totaling 12,619 for our fee-based programs. - we impacted nearly 2,000 children, teens, and adults through our community outreach programs. Live storytelling - we held our annual fundraiser, cringefest, on the big stage at the vogel in red bank with lots of laughs and lots of funds raised for our community outreach programs. - we relaunched firefly: stories out loud at its new home at two river theater with events in august and november featuring 17 storytellers on stage. We created a new class, stories on stage, to i

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 84.5%; rating input score 85
• Program expense ratio: 79.1%; rating input score 79
• Fundraising efficiency: $9.15 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 35; 35th 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: 4 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 50
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Fail
  • Document-retention policy: Fail
  • 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: Missing
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

• Operating margin: -6.8%; rating input score 23; 23rd percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.17; rating input score 10; 10th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.15; rating input score 19; 19th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 13.1%; rating input score 24; 24th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 18.2% per year; rating input score 100; 81st percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 12.9% per year; rating input score 100; 76th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 15.6% per year; rating input score 100; 76th percentile among comparable filings