Tulsa Literary Coalition Inc
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 810938231
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2017–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025
- Location
- Tulsa, OK, USA
- Phone
- 9186024452
- Rating
- 81
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Standard
- Sector
- Remedial Reading, Reading Encouragement
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $961,400
- Expenses
- $555,539
- Assets
- $1,785,089
- Liabilities
- $229,969
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
10 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- Jeff Martin (President)
- John Schumann (Vice President)
Highest reported compensation
- Jenna Akuma (Executive Dir.): $83,580 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
The Tulsa Literary Coalition strives to foster the love of reading and books and to bridge cultural, ethnic, and religious divides through literature.
What it reported doing in 2025
In 2025 Tulsa Literary Coalition hosted ninety-five events and partnered with other organizations for an additional sixty-four events. Of those, 135 events (85%) were free to attend and fifty-eight featured local authors. Events were in forty-seven different venues across Tulsa. In total, we saw over 17,000 event guests. The biggest events of the year included visits with Bonnie Garmus, Grady Hendrix, Tim Blake Nelson, Joy Harjo, Matthew McConaughey, who presented to the sold-out PAC Chapman theater, and our annual Adult Book Fair, which had over 1,400 attendees.One of our goals for 2025 was to increase the audience size of events held in the store. We achieved this with local authors such as Meg Myers Morgan, Michelle Bias, Alex Poppe, Jennifer Clark, and Paloma Angelica Lopez, as well as visiting authors including Scott Latta, actor Ron Pearlman, and Pulitzer Prize winning Jayne Anne Phillips. The average audience size for author events held in the store increased by 34% in 2025 when compared to 2024.We added fifteen new partnerships in 2025. We facilitated ninety-two book club meetings in the store with a total of 760 attendees and increased book club participation by 17%.We changed to a new point-of-sale system in the summer of 2025 that integrates in-store inventory and real-time sales with our website, allowing for full service online ordering. This increased store capacity and revenue, allowing us to reach more people and compete with other online options.
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.
- Includes noncash contributions: Reported contributions include donated property or goods.
The verdict
STRONG - The filed numbers largely add up and a large share of available resources goes toward mission work. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 65
- Transparency & Controls: 95
- Accountability: 90
- Sustainability: 70
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 61.4%; rating input score 61
- Program expense ratio: 75%; rating input score 75
- Fundraising efficiency: $17.25 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 51; 51st percentile among comparable filings
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 92.9%; rating input score 93; 22nd percentile among comparable filings
- Pay-setting controls: Limited
- Foreign activity oversight: Limited
- Grant itemization coverage: Limited
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Yes; rating input score 100
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 6 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 75
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Pass
- Document-retention policy: Pass
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: Fail
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Pass
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 42.2%; rating input score 88; 88th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 3.21; rating input score 76; 76th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.13; rating input score 31; 31st percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 15%; rating input score 25; 25th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 27% per year; rating input score 100; 86th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 25.5% per year; rating input score 100; 88th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 18.4% per year; rating input score 100; 76th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 61.4% of revenue deployed · 75% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 10 of 10 board members independent · 6 of 8 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $417K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $84K · 10 people listed
- Consistency: 26 of 27 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
- Schedules: 6 filed schedules · includes major donors and related organizations
- Filing history: 9 filing years from 2017 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 1 filed money-flow record
- Related organizations: 1 filed related-organization link
- 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.
- Review — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 51/100.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 2 of 8 not reported.
- Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
- High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 25/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 31/100.