The Biomimicry Institute

What it reported doing in 2024

Asknature - asknature and asknature hiveas the largest open-access database for innovators to find biological models for design guidance, asknature is mission-critical for our work. Students use asknature when they first learn design and engineering skills in various biomimicry programs and continue to use it as they advance through university and become innovators. Our aim is to have nature-inspired design become standard practice, with asknature as a primary tool.we currently have more than 1,775 articles describing biological strategies (a characteristic, mechanism, or process that performs a function for an organism or other type of living system), 310 describing innovations (stories behind realized and conceptual products, services, and system components that are inspired by biology), 75 indexed resources specifically designed for educators, and 40 feature pages featuring curated subsets of our content and contextualizing intros or essays. Asknature is the world's go-to and largest open-access source of biomimicry education resources for primary, secondary, post-secondary, and professional audiences. In 2024 we improved functionality and added or updated dozens of pages of content to this service.in 2024, we had approximately 636,000 engaged users on the site who accessed free resources and content (in 2023 we reported 712,000 total visitors, but changes in google analytics led to the new description and a lower number this year). Overall they generated 3.2m views. Our users come from a wide variety of sectors including education, architecture, design, engineering, biotechnology, environment, land use, health, transportation, energy, fashion, government, non-profits, and media.the us is our largest audience, but 75% of our traffic is international, coming from 229 countries. This is up from 63% in 2023, and we believe it is driven by the soft-launch of ai generated translations of all our pages into multiple languages, namely spanish, french, german, and portuguese. We hope to work out some technical issues around the way the translator works with our search functionality, and then to promote the translation option more prominently.to increase our ability to create new pages quickly and efficiently, we continued developing and using ai tools to aid in the translation of information from scientific papers into accessible asknature pages. We also continued development of a public-facing ai tool that will allow users to enter their questions in a chat-style interface and receive scientifically accurate information in easy-to-understand language, framed within asknature's editorial and ethical guidelines, and contextualized for each user's particular challenges and area of activity.we also continued producing content specifically for instagram, translating biological strategies into blueprint-like overlays on top of beautiful nature photos. We produced 29 of these images, generating thousands of new likes and receiving roughly double the average number of likes per post for our account. This was fewer images than in 2023 because of diversion of resources towards launching our asknature hive online community platform.we continued to produce our monthly newsletter through most of the year, but then sunset it as we launched the asknature hive online community platform and began to communicate with our followers that way. We also continued writing and recording 24 roughly 1-minute audio stories about biological strategies in nature for the wonderspace podcast from the panahpur foundation. In the second half of the year we began in earnest the creation of the asknature hive online community platform. This is part of our new ten-year strategy, and groundwork that will support other future efforts including an online learning platform and offline convenings.we chose to build the hive on the kajabi platform because of its low cost and robust learning module options. We launched with a series of monthly live conversations with promine

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 58.8%; rating input score 59
• Program expense ratio: 70.9%; rating input score 71
• Fundraising efficiency: $13.19 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 47; 47th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 92.9%; rating input score 93; 13th percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: 2 of 6 controls in place; rating input score 33
  • Compensation committee: Missing
  • Independent consultant: Missing
  • Other Form 990s reviewed: Pass
  • Written employment contract: Missing
  • Compensation survey or study: Missing
  • Board or committee approval: Pass
• Foreign activity oversight: 1 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 12
  • Claims monitoring procedures: Pass
  • Requires narrative reports: Fail
  • Conducts field audits: Fail
  • May suspend future funding: Fail
  • Requires financial reports: Fail
  • Conducts site visits: Fail
  • Requires grant agreements: Fail
  • May require repayment: Fail
• Grant itemization coverage: 81.6%; rating input score 82; 22nd percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 9 of 9 controls in place; rating input score 100
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: Pass
  • Other executive compensation review process: Pass
  • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
  • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
  • Audit committee oversight: Pass
  • Independent financial-statement audit: Pass

Sustainability

• Operating margin: 17.7%; rating input score 74; 74th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.75; rating input score 28; 28th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.06; rating input score 66; 66th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 21.3%; rating input score 11; 11th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 15.3% per year; rating input score 100; 78th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 16.3% per year; rating input score 100; 84th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 12.9% per year; rating input score 100; 69th percentile among comparable filings