About Us - Financials

Room to Read is a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization and takes great pride in our financial efficiency, our accountability to donors, and our transparency. We work to use every dollar contributed as efficiently as possible. Historically, over 90% of your contributions have gone towards our programs - towards helping children gain the livelong gift of education - meaning that less than 10% percent of your money went to overhead (administrative and fundraising costs). The overhead ratio rose to 15% in 2008 due to investments in our infrastructure. These strategic investments will allow us to continue to expand rapidly while maintaining the quality of our programs.

Our pledge to our donors is to continue to keep our overhead well below the industry average, to maximize the percentage of your contributions that go towards our programs, and to spend our program dollars wisely so that millions of children may benefit from our work.

We invite you to see what others have to say about us. Below you will find links to independent evaluations of our organization.

Charity Navigator Guidestar Give.org

2008 Annual Report

During 2008, Room to Read worked with over 2,200 villages across eight countries in Asia and Africa to help their children to gain access to new and enhanced educational facilities. Working in partnership with local communities, we established new libraries, built schools, published local language children's books, and funded long-term scholarships for girls. Our work in 2008 raised the total number of communities we have served to over 7,500 worldwide, bringing them one step closer to breaking the cycle of poverty.

By the end of 2008, over 3.1 million children had access to Room to Read education projects.

2007 Annual Report Download the 2008 Room to Read Annual Report

Highlights of our 2008 financials include:

  • Robust revenue growth with $21.7 million in cash and stock donations - a 29 percent increase over the prior year's total of $16.8 million.
  • Secured $4.5 million in donations in-kind - primarily children's books donated by publishers. This constitutes a 3.5 percent increase compared to last year.
  • Raised $5.2 million outside the US through foreign fundraising chapters and affiliates - a 15 percent increase over the prior year's total of $4.5 million.
  • Invested $20.2 million towards our programs - a 28 percent increase over the prior year's total of $15.8 million.
  • Spent 85 percent of our total expenses on programs which means that only 15 cents out of every dollar spent went towards overhead.
  • Capped worldwide fundraising expenses at $1.8 million; only 8 cents of every dollar went towards fundraising.

More Downloads

Annual Reports

2008 Annual Report (Adobe PDF, 3.4MB)
2007 Annual Report (Adobe PDF, 1.2MB)
2006 Annual Report (Adobe PDF, 1.3MB)

Audited Financials

2008 Audited Financials (Adobe PDF, 89kB)
2007 Audited Financials (Adobe PDF, 87kB)
2006 Audited Financials (Adobe PDF, 112kB)

990 Forms

2007 Form 990 (Adobe PDF, 2MB)
2006 Form 990 (Adobe PDF, 2.3MB)

Contact Us

If we have not answered your questions here, please visit the Finance section of our Frequent Questions. If you cannot find the answer there or you would like more financial information, please email us at finance@roomtoread.org.