Talking Tree Inc

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
992664819
IRS 990 coverage
2025–2025
Forms available
Form 990 2025
Location
Sunnyvale, CA, USA
Phone
4159447698
Rating
77
Verdict
SUPPORTED
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Small Business Development

Official website

Reported finances

Revenue
$426,820
Expenses
$407,270
Assets
$23,744
Liabilities
$-2,000

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

3 people listed

Executive titles in this filing

  • Michael Greenwald (Executive Director)

People named in this filing

  • Michael Greenwald (Executive Director)
  • C Cecilia Wang (Director of Community and Legal)
  • Alex Lu (Director of Technology and Infrastructure)

Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.

Overview

Mission

Talking Tree is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that brings free legal education and attorney-trained technology to nonprofits, new and immigrant entrepreneurs, small business owners, and rural communities who are priced out of traditional legal services at low to no cost. Talking Tree's offerings include enterprise-grade contract analysis, document drafting, and legal research tools in 30+ languages, with the goal of ensuring that every entrepreneur, regardless of background, location, or resources, has access to the professional legal tools they need to build and protect their business.

What it reported doing in 2025

TalkingTree provided low-cost access to an AI legal platform (Redwood, Redaction, Contract Studio, E-signature, Due Diligence, Find Counsel, MS Add-ins, etc) built and trained by Fortune 500 attorneys. The platform is similar to for-profit products such as Harvey.ai, Legora, and Hebbia, and enabled users to draft, review, sign, store and analyze legal contracts and documents; receive jurisdiction-aware legal guidance; redline contracts in Microsoft Word; and store and query documents using AI-powered search and due diligence workflows. Services were delivered at 90% below prevailing market rates for comparable enterprise legal AI tools (which typically start at $5,000+/year). The platform served 13,000+ users across 30+ languages, prioritizing immigrant entrepreneurs, first-generation founders, rural business owners, nonprofits, and small businesses without access to in-house counsel and priced out of outside counsel. Talking Tree estimates users saved over $1.4M in legal costs during the year. The platform runs as an alternative to open-source, and opts for a cohosted environment so that founders do not have to come equipped with their own API key and cloud servers. Revenue was generated through subscription memberships ($19.99-$149.99/month) used to cover operational costs such as token usage and cloud hosting, consistent with the organization's cost-recovery nonprofit pricing model.

Operating model

Revenue model
Other-operating. 89% of the money available for current operations came from other operating 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.
  • Includes noncash contributions: Reported contributions include donated property or goods.

The verdict

SUPPORTED - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown and expenses are high relative to revenue.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 86
  • Transparency & Controls: 90
  • Accountability: 69
  • Sustainability: 31
  • Growth: NotEnoughData

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 95.4%; rating input score 95
  • Program expense ratio: 100%; rating input score 100
  • Fundraising efficiency: Limited

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: Limited
  • Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

  • Independent voting board: 66.7%; rating input score 67; 21st 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: 4.6%; rating input score 46; 46th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.06; rating input score 5; 5th percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: Limited
  • Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 67; 67th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: Limited
  • Revenue growth: Limited
  • Asset growth: Limited

Details

  • Where the money goes: 95.4% of revenue deployed · 100% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: 2 of 3 board members independent · 5 of 7 filing controls reported
  • Programs: 3 filed program accomplishments · $407K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 3 people listed
  • Consistency: 42 of 42 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 3 filed schedules
  • 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: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 5/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 46/100.
  • Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Independent financial-statement audit not reported.