Telele Foundation
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 800551584
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2019–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2023
- Location
- Groveland, CA, USA
- Phone
- 7342181294
- Rating
- 91
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Nutrition
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $97,007
- Expenses
- $95,540
- Assets
- $2,395
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
2 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Regina Hirsch (President)
People named in this filing
- Regina Hirsch (President)
- Denise Zitnik (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 provide an educational community forum from Central Sierra emphasizing science, natural history, arts, and sustainable agriculture through lectures, field projects, and community participation. Our teaching embraces the concept of "learning by doing." Our goal is to educate and bring awareness to the importance and fragility of the Sierra Nevada.
What it reported doing in 2025
The annual Localizing California Water Conference and other statewide events serve as the hub to connect, cultivate, and catalyze collaborative action. Localizing California Waters is a diverse network of land and water stewards committed to community and watershed resilience by organizing local actions and building toward holistic, coordinated, land-based solutions. Through the "Localize" program, LCW inspires regional partnerships to implement projects that actualize the LCW vision. In 2025, the annual conference had 190 attendees, in addition to presenters.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 66% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- 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. Program spending has declined or grown slowly and revenue has declined or grown slowly.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 99
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 39
- Growth: 0
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 98.1%; rating input score 98
- Program expense ratio: 99.6%; rating input score 100
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 1.5%; rating input score 47; 47th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.03; rating input score 8; 8th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 66; 66th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: -0.9% per year; rating input score 0; 45th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: -0.4% per year; rating input score 0; 48th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: -0.2% per year; rating input score 0; 37th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 98.1% of revenue deployed · 99.6% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $95K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 2 people listed
- Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
- Schedules: 3 filed schedules
- Filing history: 3 filing years from 2019 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: Resolved incoming and outgoing counterparties from filed money flows.
- Related organizations: Filed and resolved organization relationships.
- 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.
Grant-readiness screening is separate from the live rating, not a measure of program quality. Review the source records before making a grant decision.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
- High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 8/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 47/100.
- High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.
- High — Grant Readiness: Automatic revocation: this organization had its federal tax-exempt status automatically revoked.