Tennessee · Nonprofit
PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS
PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Tennessee) receives grants from 29 organizations whose IRS filings report $7,180,309 to it, the largest being CHARTER FUND INC D/B/A CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH FUND ($2,386,000). 15 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $13M
- Funders on record
- 29
- Grants received
- $7.2M
- Net assets
- $2.5M
What Prep Public Schools does
Mission
Prep Public Schools is an all-boys public charter school with a mission to engage young men in a rigorous yet supportive learning environment that nurtures resilience, promotes academic excellence, inspires leadership, and prepares critical thinkers. Prep Public Schools welcomed its first class of 66 sixth graders in august 2018 and will grow to serve 350 young men in grades 6-12 over the next seven years.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Program
The primary service accimplishment is providing quality education to the community's most vulnerable populations. The comprehensive,college preparatory curriculum is centered around themes of innovation and leadership development, which are infused across rigorous coursework in literacy and communication, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, the arts, and social/cultural studies. The curriculum has been carefully and intentionally designed to ameliorate specific barriers that negatively impact student achievement among boys and young men experiencing poverty within hamilton county.
$8,072,397 spentof which $1,256,401 as grants$1,747,889 earned by the program100% of program spending
The program described on its FY2024 Form 990. Program spending in total: $8,072,397.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2018, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2018, 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 $3.0M to $4.6M (+53%).
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: 2018 6% · 2019 44% · 2020 55% · 2021 77% · 2022 76% · 2023 67% · 2024 82% · 2025 69%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
87% of PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (23% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 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.
Chief executive
Troy Kemp
CEO
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
The chief executive listed changed between the FY2019 and FY2020, and between the FY2024 and FY2025 filings.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 2 funders to 14 funders, grant income rose $275k → $1.6M.
9 of 29 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 10% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
Left out of every figure on this page: $1.3M from 3 payers (the payer shares this organization's board, largest Friends of Chattanooga Prep Inc). These are real filings, and they are not money PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS raised.
From the IRS filings of PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS’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
PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS leans on a few funders — its largest provides 33% of grant income and the top three 75%; half comes from just 2 funders.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 2 funders to its left
62% 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 PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 91% · 2018 100% · 2019 86% · 2020 54% · 2021 58% · 2022 49% · 2023 44% — 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
70% of PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 52% 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
60% of PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS's grant income comes from Tennessee funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $714k 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
PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS has grown faster than three-quarters of the 3,758 education nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 3,758 education nonprofits $10M–$100M, FY2025
Organizations like PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS
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 Tennessee
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
61% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Footprint & structure
Part of a family of 1 related entity
- Friends of Chattanooga Prep Inc · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS: 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 PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
- PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS (Tennessee) receives grants from 29 organizations whose IRS filings report $7,180,309 to it, the largest being CHARTER FUND INC D/B/A CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH FUND ($2,386,000). 15 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS have?
- IRS filings report 29 organizations giving $7,180,309 in grants to PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS, 15 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS?
- CHARTER FUND INC D/B/A CHARTER SCHOOL GROWTH FUND is the largest funder on record, with $2,386,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like PREP PUBLIC SCHOOLS find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Tennessee. 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 2018–2025), and the filings of 29 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