True Story Theater
Legal name: True Story
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 510479487
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2021–2025
- Official website data refreshed
- Sep 2026
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025
- Location
- Arlington, MA, USA
- Phone
- 7819751772
- Rating
- 42
- Verdict
- MIXED
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Performing Arts Organizations
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $53,967
- Expenses
- $56,168
- Assets
- $269,987
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
4 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Amy Tai (Board President)
- Christopher Ellinger (Executive Director)
People named in this filing
- Amy Tai (Board President)
- Tonia Maria Pinheiro (Treasurer)
- Max Roberts-Zirker (Clerk)
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
True Story Theater’s mission is to promote social healing through theatre by building empathy, respect, and understanding in the honoring of true life stories. Audience members respond to seeing a True Story Theater performance with the Mystic LGBTQ+ Youth Support Network and the Arlington Human Rights Commission. Video produced by Mark Teiwes. Stories of people in a local community: Port area of Cambridge Moments from “Stories of the Port,” a performance in partnership with Sarah Boyer of the Cambridge Historical Commission honoring experiences of people who live or work in the Port area of Cambridge. This project was supported in part by The Cambridge Art Council, a local agency supported by the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
What it reported doing in 2025
STATEMENT 2 PART III Lines 28-30 Program Accomplishments: True Story Theater (TST) delivered 19 performances in FY26 (4 online, 15 in person). 430 people attended. Show themes included Stories of Living with Pain, Hunger Awareness and Action, Women Made Visible, Being Queer in these Times, Invisible Disabilities, First Generation. TST delivered 4 training sessions (2 online, 2 in person). 34 people learned Playback Theatre, improv and listening skills. Playback Theatre Resources (PTR) delivered 5 learning experiences: 4 Conducting Playback series (5-sessions each) and 1 Try Playback free workshop. 69 people attended these events. Embodied Empathy (EE) delivered 3 Embodied Empathy workshops. 23 people attended. (In FY26, PTR/EE replaced retired Playback North America program.) AR is researching and developing a website for the historical account of the legacy created by Caravan Theater, (an experimental social justice theater company that produced plays in Harvard Square, Cambridge MA from 1965-1980), giving rise to feminist theatre.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Mixed. Its operating money came from several sources; no one source provided a clear majority.
- 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
MIXED - The filed numbers largely add up. A relatively small share of available resources goes toward mission work and a relatively small share of total spending goes to programs.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 11
- Transparency & Controls: 82
- Sustainability: 56
- Growth: 20
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 9.9%; rating input score 10
- Program expense ratio: 11.6%; rating input score 12
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Limited
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -4.1%; rating input score 36; 36th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 4.81; rating input score 83; 83rd 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: -18.9% per year; rating input score 0; 20th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: -1.2% per year; rating input score 0; 45th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 10.9% per year; rating input score 100; 72nd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- What they do: 1 programs and campaigns described on the official site
- Where the money goes: 9.9% of revenue deployed · 11.6% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 1 filed program accomplishment · $6K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 4 people listed
- Consistency: 9 of 9 current checks pass
- Schedules: 2 filed schedules
- Filing history: 5 filing years from 2021 to 2025
- 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 — Financial Efficiency: Mission deployment rate scored 10/100.
- High — Financial Efficiency: Program expense ratio scored 12/100.
- High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
- High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 36/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.