Sweet Readers Inc
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 451682762
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2015–2023
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2023, Form 990-N 2014
- Location
- Boston, MA, USA
- Phone
- 9178868116
- Rating
- 83
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Patient Services - Entertainment, Recreation
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $17,526
- Expenses
- $27,004
- Assets
- $10,670
- Liabilities
- $2,350
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2023. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
10 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- KAREN YOUNG (PRESIDENT/DIRECTOR)
People named in this filing
- KAREN YOUNG (PRESIDENT/DIRECTOR)
- ELLA KLINSKY (TREASURER/DIRECTOR)
- KIM ZINN (SECRETARY/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 2023. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Sweet readers builds communities around the transformational interaction between trained middle school students and isolated older adults, most living with some form of dementia. Our mission is to inspire young people, through training, multigenerational programs and immersive community events, to revitalize adults living with dementia and become catalysts to improve healthcare for all. Our facilitated programs, based in language and the arts and infused with science, are housed in museums, community centers, school classrooms and elder care centers. In fy24, we streamlined our programs as our focus continued to be on developing a model to scale sweet readers' impact, driven by youth and their school communities while virtually eliminating the need for overhead costs and unnecessary infrastructure.
What it reported doing in 2023
In fy24, we continued to run sweet readers programs in the us, serving over 500 isolated older adults, care partners, youth and faculty. We continued to narrow our program focus to achieve two major goals: 1. Strengthen our model to serve low income communities through free programming and 2. Develop a virtually cost free programming and infrastructure model to sustain and scale the charity in its next growth phase. By the end of fy24 we announced a 12 person multidisciplinary advisory board to help us complete the sweet readers toolkit to enable a diverse range of schools to adapt our programs with ease. The total cost of programming for fy24 came to $23,069.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Earned-program. 83% 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 - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Expenses are high relative to revenue and revenue has declined or grown slowly.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 94
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 22
- Growth: 40
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
- Program expense ratio: 85.4%; rating input score 85
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -54.1%; rating input score 13; 13th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.4; rating input score 25; 25th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.22; rating input score 14; 14th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 9.2% per year; rating input score 100; 70th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: -9.7% per year; rating input score 0; 26th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -14.3% per year; rating input score 0; 14th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 85.4% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $23K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 10 people listed
- Consistency: 8 of 8 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 8 filing years from 2015 to 2023
- 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 13/100.
- High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 25/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 14/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.