Books Are Gems

What Books Are Gems does

The organization over time

Each line starts at 100 in 2021, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2021, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2023 to 2024, from $33k to $179k (+440%).

How it's funded, over time

Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 0 of the last 3 reported years ran a deficit.

Leadership and staff

Who funds it, year by year

2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 1 funder to 4 funders, grant income rose $3k → $27k.

3 of 14 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 52% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.

From the IRS filings of Books Are Gems’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How concentrated its funding is

Books Are Gems leans on a few funders — its largest provides 37% of grant income and the top three 61%; half comes from just 2 funders.

63% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Books Are Gems.

Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 100% · 2019 100% · 2020 97% · 2021 32% · 2022 56% · 2023 38% — diversifying over time.

“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.

How long its funders stay

50% of Books Are Gems's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 50% give in more than one year at all.

Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.

Where its funders are

52% of Books Are Gems's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $122k that is directly attributable, 63% of it comes from Texas funders.

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $132k arriving through sponsors registered in 2 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.