Written 2026-08-21 because Eduardo named the gap directly: nonprofit financials go a little over his head, specifically how they make their money and whether they can actually afford what they are asking for. That is a learnable skill, it takes about ten minutes per prospect, and it is the difference between quoting to their scale and quoting to nerves.

Standing directive from him the same day: reference this data whenever AC is pricing work, and while defining the pricing itself.

Getting the data, free, no account

Every US 501(c)(3) files an annual IRS Form 990, and it is public. ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer serves it as an API with no key and no signup.

```bash

# 1. name to EIN

curl -s "https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v2/search.json?q=casita+maria"

# 2. the filing history

curl -s "https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/api/v2/organizations/131623994.json" ```

The search is fuzzy, so confirm the EIN against their city and state before trusting it. Each filing also carries a pdf_url to the real scanned return when a number needs its full context.

Caution on lag. A 990 is filed months after the fiscal year closes. Casita Maria's most recent available filing covers the year ending June 2023, read in August 2026. It is the best public picture, not a current one. Treat it as establishing scale and shape, never as this month's bank balance.

The five reads that matter

1. Total revenue is not spendable money

The instinct is to see $3.3M and think there is room for a $50K project. Often there is not. Nonprofit money arrives with strings: a grant for an after-school program legally cannot buy a website. The 990 summary does not split restricted from unrestricted, so treat total revenue as scale, not budget.

2. Assets are almost never a war chest, and there is a test

Casita Maria shows $12,777,590 in end-of-year assets. That number will tempt anyone into pricing higher. Do not.

The test takes one field. Their investment income was $2,673. A genuine $12.8M endowment throws off hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. Producing $2,673 means the assets are not invested, which means they are almost certainly the building. Illiquid, unavailable, and irrelevant to whether they can pay an invoice.

Rule: divide investment income by total assets. A meaningful percentage means an endowment and real capacity. Near zero means bricks.

3. Where the money comes from tells you which pocket pays AC

For Casita Maria, FY2023:

| Source | Amount | | --- | --- | | Contributions and grants | $3,370,398 | | Rental income from property | $35,471 | | Investment income | $2,673 | | Special events, gross | $72,000 |

They are almost entirely contribution-funded. There is essentially no earned program revenue. That single fact should shape the whole engagement: AC's fee comes out of money somebody donated or granted, which means the strongest pitch is not "spend your money on marketing," it is "here is how this helps you raise more of it."

This is where the capacity-building reframe earns its keep. Funders fund capacity. A website, a communications system, and a fundraising-support engine can be written into a grant proposal as a project far more easily than they can be squeezed out of an operating budget. AC is often not asking them to find money, AC is helping them go ask for it. That reframe also connects directly to the Ad Grant hook that anchors the nonprofit lane.

4. Surplus or deficit, over several years, not one

| Fiscal year | Revenue | Expenses | Result | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | 2023 | $3,332,682 | $3,458,191 | -$125,509 | | 2022 | $2,771,445 | $3,191,241 | -$419,796 | | 2021 | $2,836,883 | $3,322,367 | -$485,484 |

Three consecutive deficit years. They are spending down.

This does not mean do not pitch them. It means price and structure with open eyes: phased scope, a retainer rather than a large lump, and framing that ties the work to revenue rather than to overhead. It also means an honest conversation is available that a competitor guessing from the outside cannot have.

5. How much of the budget is already people

FY2023: other salaries and wages $1,666,156, payroll taxes $163,817, officer compensation $60,560. Roughly $1.89M of $3.46M in expenses is payroll, about 55%. Typical for a direct-service arts and education organization, and it tells you the discretionary layer is thin. It also tells you what they cannot do in-house, which is what AC is selling.

The finding worth asking about, carefully

Casita Maria's FY2023 special-events line shows $72,000 gross with $148,110 in direct expenses, netting -$76,110.

Do not walk in and say their gala lost money. On a 990 the charitable portion of a ticket is reported under contributions, and only the fair-market-value portion appears on the special-events line, so a negative net there is not proof of a failed event. The honest read is narrower and still useful: the non-charitable side of their events cost roughly twice what it returned.

That is a question, not an accusation, and it is exactly the kind of question AC is qualified to ask. Events, fundraising, and social are the lane. Anyone can say "we do event marketing." Very few walk in already knowing the shape of the event economics.

The ten-minute checklist

Search the name, confirm the EIN against city and state.
Pull the filing history. How many years, and how recent is the newest?
Revenue trend over three years, and surplus or deficit each year.
Investment income divided by total assets. Endowment or building?
Revenue mix. Contributions, program service revenue, events, rent.
Payroll as a share of expenses.
Officer compensation as a scale sanity check.
Write the two sentences: where their money comes from, and which pocket would pay AC.

Those last two sentences are the deliverable. Everything above exists to produce them.

Why this changes the pricing conversation

Eduardo's stated weak point is being comfortable asking for the price. The 990 attacks that directly, because most discomfort in pricing is uncertainty wearing a costume. It is hard to name a number when you are guessing whether it is outrageous. It is much easier when you know the organization runs a $3.5M budget, carries a building rather than an endowment, has been running a deficit, funds itself almost entirely through contributions, and spends $148K on the expense side of its events.

That is not leverage over them, and it should never be used as leverage. It is the removal of AC's own uncertainty. The number stops being a guess and becomes a proportion.