Idaho · Nonprofit
STEP AHEAD IDAHO
STEP AHEAD IDAHO (Idaho) receives grants from 3 organizations whose IRS filings report $58,500 to it, the largest being IDAHO WOMENS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ($30,000). 3 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 51% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- Revenue FY2025
- $104k
- Funders on record
- 3
- Grants received
- $59k
- Net assets
- $193k
What Step Ahead Idaho does
Mission
Step Ahead Idaho addresses the community need for more comprehensive, affordable college admission counseling by providing free college drop-in advising, free workshops, and fee-for-service workshops.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ.
Programs
1. Free college advising drop-in centers. We operate two college advising centers: a pop-up drop-in at the downtown ymca and a stand-alone center adjacent to the hillcrest library. These drop-in centers are completely free of charge and designed to be places where students can get counseling and advice on any aspect of the college-going process. Since covid, we have expanded our availability to include in person or zoom meetings. Between both drop-in sites and via zoom, seven advisors see students three to four days per week, helping students and families navigate the college application, financial aid, scholarship search, and college essay writing process. Staffing these sites ourselves and training volunteers to assist us, we typically see 50+ students each month and staff 40+hours each month. The ymca charges no rent for the use of their space, and the library charges $550 per month for the use of our hillcrest office. Our projected operational costs are $11,265.00our projected personnel costs are $54,000.00there are 15 public high schools in the treasure valley, and more than 10 private and charter high schools that serve over 28,000 high school students. As the treasure…
$0 spent2. Free workshops. Before covid-19, we strived to reach out to the larger community with free talks at our new hillcrest location and events that provide information to targeted groups. Among our most heavily attended sessions were: how to choose a college, what to know about applying to selective schools/military academies/the ivy leagues, navigating financial aid, boise school district health professions expo and how to be a recruited athlete. Our outreach extended to providing workshops at the hispanic leadership conference, leadership boise, boise school district evenings about health and stem-based careers, sessions for financial planners interested in providing better college affordability advice for their clients, and college-readiness clinics for over 1500 junior high and high school students. The pandemic shifted our focus to working with individuals and their families so our assistance is targeted and personalized, and to working in partnership with organizations like college bound to deliver programming that is designed for fewer students at one time via in person sessions and different digital learning platforms. We have also expanded our outreach to blaine and valley…
$0 spent3. Fee-for-service clients & paid workshops. We offer several private advising options for students, including one-on-one advising and intensive essay-writing workshops all on a sliding-scale, fee-for-service basis. Over eleven years, we have grown from serving a handful of students to over 200 one-on-one each year. In 2023, we held six college essay writing workshops at our hillcrest center and two more in valley county, as well as three affordable small-group test prep sessions in partnership with vetted local tutors we know offer quality tutoring for the psat, sat and act. As is our way, we offer scholarships for any services for which we also charge. We also visited vision charter to host a college readiness night for 50 9th-12th graders.in 2024, our aim is to increase our workshops at area schools and, at our hillcrest site, continue to offer standardized test prep as well as increase the number of more established programs we have historically offered. We also aim to continue creating new sessions and workshops that address the needs of our growing population.our projected resources budget for this aspect of our services is $20,000 per year.
$0 spent
The 3 programs described on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ. Program spending in total: $0.
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 2024 to 2025, from $259k to $193k (−26%).
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.
0% of STEP AHEAD IDAHO’s revenue is contributions — more earned-revenue than three-quarters of its peers (57% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 5 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.
Leadership and staff
Chief executive
Sue Lovelace
Executive director
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990-EZ.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base held at 1 funder, grant income rose $1k → $3k.
1 of 3 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 51% 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 STEP AHEAD IDAHO’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
STEP AHEAD IDAHO leans on a few funders — its largest provides 51% of grant income and the top three 100%; half comes from just 1 funder.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 1 funder to its left
51% 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 STEP AHEAD IDAHO.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 100% · 2018 56% · 2019 70% · 2020 87% · 2021 100% · 2022 67% · 2023 100% — 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.
Where its funders are
51% of STEP AHEAD IDAHO'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 $29k that is directly attributable, 61% of it comes from funders outside Idaho, across 2 states.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $30k arriving through sponsors registered in 1 state 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
STEP AHEAD IDAHO's revenue grew 28% between 2018 and 2025.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 16,849 education nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025
Organizations like STEP AHEAD IDAHO
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 Idaho
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
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 STEP AHEAD IDAHO: 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 STEP AHEAD IDAHO?
- STEP AHEAD IDAHO (Idaho) receives grants from 3 organizations whose IRS filings report $58,500 to it, the largest being IDAHO WOMENS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION ($30,000). 3 of them have funded it in more than one year, and 51% of the money arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors rather than from an institution directly.
- How many funders does STEP AHEAD IDAHO have?
- IRS filings report 3 organizations giving $58,500 in grants to STEP AHEAD IDAHO, 3 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of STEP AHEAD IDAHO?
- IDAHO WOMENS CHARITABLE FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $30,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like STEP AHEAD IDAHO find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Idaho. 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 Step Ahead Idaho →
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 3 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