Arizona · Nonprofit
Higher Ground A Resource Center
Higher Ground A Resource Center (Arizona) receives grants from 15 organizations whose IRS filings report $637,130 to it, the largest being COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHERN ARIZONA ($325,800). 8 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 63% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2022
- $1.7M
- Funders on record
- 15
- Grants received
- $637k
- Net assets
- $48k
What Higher Ground A Resource Center does
Mission
Our mission is to empower one life at a time to REACH, TRANSFORM and ELEVATE their community through love and building character.For us, Higher Ground is more than just a place, but rather, it's a culture-infusing catalyst that aims to create system-wide change, building up our high-need communities - one child and family at a time - and creating collaborative networks of support that ultimately uplift our entire city. Our vision is to inspire youth and families to be part of lasting community contribution. We want to create the momentum for lasting sustainable change in the way we develop our children and youth to redefine success as community contribution, where schools and youth organizations become places where an individual transformation leads to stronger collective impact in their own communities
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
The Restart S.M.A.R.T. strategy, a local implementation of the community school model by Higher Ground, effectively organizes school and public resources to address specific community needs. By integrating trained staff within the school community, we provide a crucial link between community services and families facing opportunity gaps. Our collaborative approach, partnering with students, their families, and the wider community, promotes individualized success. Restart S.M.A.R.T. emphasizes evidence-based, strategic, mindful, agile, aware, resilient, and trauma-responsive decision-making in every interaction.In the year 2021-2022, we have expanded from 2 to 7 school sites across Tucson, with discussions for an 8th site in Chandler, Arizona. Our work is acknowledged as a full-fidelity implementation model of the community school strategy, with research partnerships demonstrating outcomes beyond mere attendance improvement and negative behavior reduction. In the 2021-2022 academic year, we engaged 2,083 students, collaborated with 124 groups, businesses, and organizations, worked with 300 families, and leveraged resources across our seven school communities.Our impact is evident…
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990.
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 2021 to 2022, from $135k to $412k (+205%).
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 17% · 2022 53%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
69% of Higher Ground A Resource Center’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than 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 6 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.
Chief executive
Jansen Azarias
CEO
Board chair
Ramon Valadez
Board Chair
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base held at 3 funders, grant income fell $66k → $18k.
6 of 15 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 63% 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 Higher Ground A Resource Center’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
Higher Ground A Resource Center leans on a few funders — its largest provides 51% of grant income and the top three 76%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
75% 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 Higher Ground A Resource Center.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 68% · 2018 52% · 2019 54% · 2020 35% · 2021 47% · 2022 38% · 2023 66% — broadly stable.
“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
44% of Higher Ground A Resource Center's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 53% 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
63% of Higher Ground A Resource Center'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 $238k that is directly attributable, 62% of it comes from funders outside Arizona, across 6 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $399k arriving through sponsors registered in 4 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
Higher Ground A Resource Center runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 10,920 education nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 10,920 education nonprofits $1M–$10M, FY2022
Government funding Higher Ground A Resource Center receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $1.1M on record.
- Department of Health and Human Services$1.1M
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like Higher Ground A Resource Center
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 Arizona
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
0% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
100%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Higher Ground A Resource Center: 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 Higher Ground A Resource Center?
- Higher Ground A Resource Center (Arizona) receives grants from 15 organizations whose IRS filings report $637,130 to it, the largest being COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHERN ARIZONA ($325,800). 8 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 63% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does Higher Ground A Resource Center have?
- IRS filings report 15 organizations giving $637,130 in grants to Higher Ground A Resource Center, 8 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Higher Ground A Resource Center?
- COMMUNITY FOUNDATION FOR SOUTHERN ARIZONA is the largest funder on record, with $325,800 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Higher Ground A Resource Center find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Arizona. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Higher Ground A Resource Center →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2022 (financials across 2017–2022), and the filings of 15 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