California · Nonprofit
Challenge Success
Challenge Success (California) receives grants from 40 organizations whose IRS filings report $5,222,348 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($1,151,724). 27 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 73% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $2.1M
- Funders on record
- 40
- Grants received
- $5.2M
- Net assets
- $2.0M
What Challenge Success does
Mission
Challenge Success partners with schools, families, and communities to embrace a broad definition of success and implement research-based strategies that promote student well-being and engagement with learning.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
School program: teaming with schools from across the country, Challenge Success provides practical, site-specific solutions to increase student engagement & well being while reducing the undue stress and pressure that so many students face today. Specifically, Challenge Success works with schools to develop and implement action planning guides to improve student engagement with learning and well-being. The organization trains coaches who are assigned to work with individual schools. Coaches meet with school teams at the fall and spring conferences, typically held at stanford, and then continue to meet at the school
$1,734,104 spent$1,140,273 earned by the program100% of program spendingParent education and professional development: Challenge Success also provides live and on-line format parent education & professional development workshops. Presentations are highly interactive and research-based.
Research projects and school surveys: Challenge Success designs and implements school surveys that diagnose the root cause of what is working well or not well with regard to student engagement and well-being health and well-being at middle and high schools across the us and abroad.
The 3 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $1,734,104.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 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 $844k to $2.5M (+193%).
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.
Government-grant reliance: 2021 24%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
40% of Challenge Success’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (48% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 3 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 11 funders to 17 funders, grant income rose $217k → $1.8M.
15 of 40 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 73% 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 Challenge Success’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 40 funders by total. 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
Challenge Success has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 22% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 3 funders to its left
76% 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 Challenge Success.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 28% · 2018 41% · 2019 26% · 2020 35% · 2021 29% · 2022 45% · 2023 52% — growing more concentrated.
“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
57% of Challenge Success's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 68% 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
73% of Challenge Success'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 $1.4M that is directly attributable, 74% of it comes from funders outside California, across 11 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $3.8M arriving through sponsors registered in 9 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.
Against its field
Challenge Success is better cushioned than half of the 9,398 education nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 9,398 education nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2025
Organizations like Challenge Success
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
72% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
76%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Challenge Success: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Challenge Success?
- Challenge Success (California) receives grants from 40 organizations whose IRS filings report $5,222,348 to it, the largest being FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND ($1,151,724). 27 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 73% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does Challenge Success have?
- IRS filings report 40 organizations giving $5,222,348 in grants to Challenge Success, 27 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Challenge Success?
- FIDELITY INVESTMENTS CHARITABLE GIFT FUND is the largest funder on record, with $1,151,724 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Challenge Success find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 40 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing