Nonprofit · EIN 26-1906629
IOLA FOUNDATION
Tax-exempt · LOS ANGELES, CA 90046
Financials
| Year ended | Form | Revenue | Expenses | Net income | Total assets | Liabilities | Net assets |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| December 31, 2025 | 990 | $1,792,286 | $1,536,938 | $255,348 | $719,525 | $4,185 | $715,340 |
| December 31, 2024 | 990 | $2,136,887 | $2,478,492 | -$341,605 | $524,299 | $64,307 | $459,992 |
| December 31, 2023 | 990 | $2,504,910 | $4,152,364 | -$1,647,454 | $920,376 | $120,282 | $800,094 |
Financial details: 990 for the year ended December 31, 2025
Revenue
- Contributions, gifts and grants
- $1,792,244
- Program service revenue
- $0
- Investment income
- $42
- Other revenue
- $0
Expenses
- Grants and similar amounts paid
- $252,500
- Compensation of officers, directors and key employees
- $190,410
- Other salaries and wages
- $672,874
- Salaries, compensation and benefits (total)
- $1,015,632
- Professional fundraising fees
- $0
- Legal fees
- $3,499
- Accounting fees
- $31,200
- Occupancy
- $4,171
- Travel
- $14,114
- Depreciation
- $3,565
- Program services (functional)
- $1,115,715
- Management and general (functional)
- $226,202
- Fundraising (functional)
- $195,021
Balance sheet and other
- Total assets, start of year
- $524,299
- Total assets, end of year
- $719,525
- Total liabilities, end of year
- $4,185
- Net assets, end of year
- $715,340
- Land, buildings and equipment
- $2,190
- Net assets without donor restrictions
- $415,340
- Net assets with donor restrictions
- $300,000
- Gross receipts
- $1,792,286
- Employees
- 12
- Volunteers
- 10
- Year formed
- 2008
- State of legal domicile
- CA
From the e-filed returns the IRS publishes as XML (latest three processing years; amended returns replace the original). PDF copies at the IRS.
Officers, directors and key employees
As listed on the 990 for the year ended December 31, 2025, highest compensation first.
| Name | Title | Hours / week | Compensation | Other / benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Wenke | Chief Executive Officer Officer | 40 | $178,469 | $11,941 |
| Justin Tindall | Sr. Dir., Programs & Operations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $146,698 | $11,572 |
| Ross Von Metzke | Sr. Dir., Comm. & Public Relations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $137,932 | $11,561 |
| Paul Dien | Chair & President Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Avrielle Gallagher | Vice Chair Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Brian Pines | Secretary & Treasurer Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Carl Baloney | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Moe Ari Brown | Director (end 3/25) Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Christina Fialho | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Tracy Gilchrist | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Rob Leis | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Shaun Lewis | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Justin Wee | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
990 for the year ended December 31, 2024: 16 people
| Name | Title | Hours / week | Compensation | Other / benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Wenke | Chief Executive Officer Officer | 40 | $167,954 | $11,300 |
| Ross Von Metzke | Sr. Dir., Comm. & Public Relations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $133,370 | $11,300 |
| Justin Tindall | Sr. Dir., Programs & Operations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $125,727 | $11,300 |
| Jimmy Ancheta-Tilley Jr | Dir., Development Highest-paid employee | 40 | $108,075 | $11,300 |
| Paul Dien | Chair & President Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Avrielle Gallagher | Vice Chair Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Brian Pines | Secretary & Treasurer Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Carl Boloney | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Moe Ari Brown | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Christina Fialho | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Tracy Gilchrist | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Rob Leis | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Seth Levy | Director (end 3/24) Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Shaun Lewis | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Stephanie Ruyle | Director (end 3/24) Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Justin Wee | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
990 for the year ended December 31, 2023: 14 people
| Name | Title | Hours / week | Compensation | Other / benefits |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Brian Wenke | Chief Executive Officer Officer | 40 | $177,224 | $11,643 |
| Ross Von Metzke | Dir., Comm. & Public Relations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $129,205 | $10,806 |
| Justin Tindall | Director, Programs & Operations Highest-paid employee | 40 | $127,912 | $10,010 |
| Eboni Munn | Dir., Storytelling & Strategic Mktg. Highest-paid employee | 40 | $125,695 | $10,596 |
| Jimmy Ancheta-Tilley Jr | Dir., Development Highest-paid employee | 40 | $110,568 | $12,336 |
| Paul Dien | Chair & President Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Avrielle Gallagher | Vice Chair Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Brian Pines | Secretary & Treasurer Trustee or director, Officer | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Carl Boloney | Director (Start 03/23) Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Moe Ari Brown | Director (Start 07/23) Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Seth Levy | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Shaun Lewis | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Stephanie Ruyle | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
| Justin Wee | Director Trustee or director | 5 | $0 | $0 |
Address and contacts
- Address (IRS master file)
- 7190 W SUNSET BLVD 504, LOS ANGELES, CA 90046-4415
- In care of
- % BRIAN PINES
- Principal officer (990 for 2025)
- Paul Dien, 7190 W Sunset Blvd 504, Los Angeles, CA 90046
- Signed the 990
- Paul Dien, Chair & President
- Phone
- (323) 782-4934
- Website
- www.itgetsbetter.org
- Return prepared by
- Harrington Group CPAs LLP
California records
California keeps its own records of charities and corporations. Search them by EIN 26-1906629 or by the name IOLA FOUNDATION.
- Attorney General, Registry of Charities and Fundraisers
- Registration status and filed reports (CT-TR-1, RRF-1)
- Secretary of State, bizfile Online
- Corporation status, entity number, agent for service
- Franchise Tax Board
- Entity status letter (state tax exemption, good standing)
Mission
It Gets Better's mission is to uplift, empower, and connect lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) youth around the globe.
Program accomplishments
- It Gets Better EDU exists to ensure our uplifting and informative stories reach LGBTQ+ youth and their peers wherever learning takes place. With an impactful youth ambassador program, student-driven grantmaking initiatives, and a growing library of free educational resources for educators and student leaders, thousands of middle and high school students engage with It Gets Better EDU programming every year.In 2025, It Gets Better EDU, with support from American Eagle, the MAC Viva Glam Foundation, Humble Bundle, and Tumblr, returned with season four of It Gets Better: Changemakers. We awarded $252,500 in grants to 27 schools and community organizations throughout the United States. Grants supported a range of LGBTQ+ inclusive projects, from community art projects and queer proms to launching Genders & Sexualities Alliances and Pride celebrations. Since 2022, It Gets Better has distributed more than $1.6 million in grants through this program to support 170 projects across the United States and Canada.Throughout the year, our Youth Voices ambassadors proved themselves to be powerful spokespeople for both It Gets Better and their peers. Two ambassadors kicked off the year by hosting the discussion "Supporting LGBTQ+ Youth in Challenging Times" for an audience of educators, school administrators, and nonprofit professionals at SXSW EDU. Youth Voices ambassadors also led street teams of their peers to document Pride celebrations in eight cities around the country and participated in panel discussions for Mental Health Awareness Month, Pride Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, and Trans Day of Remembrance. We capped off 2025 with two Youth Voices alums being named to GLAAD's annual 20 Under 20 list.This year, It Gets Better took over stewardship of imi, the digital mental health resource created in collaboration with Hopelab and CenterLink. More than 230,000 people have found support through imi since 2022, including 50,000 unique users in 2025 alone.In total, roughly 991,000 people, including 8,526 educators, accessed It Gets Better EDU resources and engaged with Youth Voices-generated content in 2025.Expenses $504,601 · grants $252,500
- Storytelling is at the heart of our effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth around the globe. We share stories that inspire hope, stories that spark conversations, and stories that can inform and positively influence a sexual orientation and/or gender identity journey. Every It Gets Better story offers a unique, wisdom-infused perspective designed to show LGBTQ+ youth that through community, shared experiences, and life-affirming resources, things can and will get better. This simple message of hope has been translated across all forms of media, including social media, television specials, best-selling books, theater, museum exhibits and more. It has attracted millions of followers and supporters from around the world. It Gets Better is the destination for LGBTQ+ youth exploring their sexual orientation and/or gender identity.In 2025, It Gets Better shared uplifting content and messages that reached a global audience of more than 2 million people across TikTok, Instagram, Twitch, Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn, and Bluesky, and more than 190,000 unique visitors explored ItGetsBetter.org, our information-rich website, to engage with resources designed to inform LGBTQ+ youth on their sexual orientation and/or gender identity journey. Each year, we are engaging with roughly 655,000 young people through our media and website channels.In response to pivotal cultural and political moments, It Gets Better created timely storytelling campaigns to remind LGBTQ+ youth they are seen, valued, and worthy of joy. For Valentine's Day, our "See Us, Love Us" campaign featured real-life LGBTQ+ couples, best friends, siblings, and chosen family members in a series of photos and videos celebrating queer love in all its forms. As book bans and attacks on LGBTQ+ language continued to dominate headlines, we developed the "Banned Words" crossword puzzle, a storytelling and engagement campaign that turned censorship into connection. In July, we launched our first Summer Reading Challenge, a campaign that celebrated queer literature and more than a dozen LGBTQ+ authors while raising funds to support LGBTQ+ youth. We refreshed the traditional "It Gets Better" video format by asking guests to finish the sentence: "It Gets Better When..." The series launched with Karla Mosley, star of the CBS soap opera Beyond the Gates, whose video became the most-viewed live-action original video we had produced in more than three years. We followed with new videos from influencer and creator Shannon Beveridge, the cast of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds for Mental Health Action Day, and award-winning actor Guillermo Daz.We presented our fifth annual It Gets Better: A Digital Pride Experience, bringing 130 LGBTQ+ streamers together on Twitch throughout June, the most streamers we have ever worked with for a single campaign. Collectively, they went live for more than 350 hours of content for queer youth, raising critical funds for our work and showing young viewers that Pride does not only live in big-city parades. Our end-of-year fundraising campaign, The Bigger Picture, was a storytelling-centric effort designed to show LGBTQ+ youth that there is life beyond the headlines. As our biggest end-of-year fundraising effort to date, the campaign featured video content from celebrities and supporters including Noah Wyle, Paul Feig, Rosie O'Donnell, Margaret Cho, Conor Janda, Mike Manning, Karla Mosley, and more. The campaign culminated in our first-ever Queerathon on Twitch, a ten-hour livestream event featuring gaming, panel discussions, a live book reading, interviews, and participation from Youth Voices ambassadors and It Gets Better: Changemakers grantees.Expenses $367,763
- It Gets Better is the world's largest storytelling effort to empower LGBTQ+ youth. Investing in local, like-minded organizations outside the US, It Gets Better brings storytelling and other life-affirming support to communities of LGBTQ+ youth around the globe. By the end of 2025, the It Gets Better Global Affiliate Network continued to span 19 countries across four continents, with global storytelling efforts happening in eight languages: English, Spanish, Portuguese, Russian, German, Greek, French, and Hungarian.In May, as an introduction to Pride Month, It Gets Better hosted its Global Summit live on Twitch. The summit drew participation and viewers from 14 countries in English and Spanish, including Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, Hungary, the United Kingdom, and Peru. The event featured youth-led panels, gaming segments, and highlighted our growing It Gets Better Espaol initiative.Our global affiliates continued to celebrate major wins throughout the year. It Gets Better Canada received more than $1.5 million CAD in funding from the Canadian Department of Women and Gender Equality to support 2SLGBTQI+ youth. The funding helped support the development of GLO, an app that launched in late 2025 and provides daily check-ins, stress management lessons, and an interactive companion for mental health support. It Gets Better Brazil's series Conversas Que Inspiram was nominated for the Prisma Queer Award at the 49th So Paulo International Film Festival, and Rubn Maza, Director of It Gets Better Mexico, was awarded "Activist of the Year" at the Impulse LGBTIQ+ Awards.Our It Gets Better Espaol initiative also continued to grow in 2025 as part of a three-year commitment from Converse to support our capacity-building efforts to expand storytelling initiatives, educational programming, and global community-building for Spanish-speaking LGBTQ+ youth audiences in the U.S. and abroad. We continued to collaborate with Hispanic creators on our largely Spanish-language Instagram channel, @itgetsbetterespanol. For Hispanic Heritage Month and in celebration of It Gets Better's 15th anniversary, we launched the quinceanera-themed campaign #Mis15. Influencers including Drag Race Mexico co-host Lolita Banana and actor/activist Rose Montoya wrote and recorded video messages to their 15-year-old selves, with participation from our Youth Voices. We capped the month with a quinceanera-themed stream on Twitch in collaboration with Electronic Arts and The Sims.Expenses $243,351
What it must file and when
IRS records say it files Form 990 or 990-EZ. Based on its last return; a smaller organization may file the 990-N. Its accounting year ends in December, so each return is due on the 15th day of the 5th month after that.
| Tax year | Year ended | Due | IRS public records |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | December 31, 2025 | May 15, 2026 | 990 on file |
| 2024 | December 31, 2024 | May 15, 2025 | 990 on file |
| 2023 | December 31, 2023 | May 15, 2024 | 990 on file |
IRS record
- EIN
- 26-1906629
- Tax-exempt status
- 501(c)(3): Charitable, religious, educational or scientific organization
- Foundation status
- Publicly supported organization (170(b)(1)(A)(vi))
- Donations deductible (Pub 78)
- Public charity, 50% deduction limit
- Exempt since
- 2008
- Accounting year ends
- December
- Files
- Form 990 or 990-EZ
- Category (NTEE)
- Philanthropy, voluntarism and grantmaking foundations (T50)
- Assets (IRS master file)
- $719,525
- Income (IRS master file)
- $1,792,286
Filing history
| Form | Year ended | Revenue | Expenses | Assets | Return |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 990 | December 2025 | $1,792,286 | $1,536,938 | $719,525 | XML |
| 990 | December 2024 | $2,136,887 | $2,478,492 | $524,299 | XML |
| 990 | December 2023 | $2,504,910 | $4,152,364 | $920,376 | XML |
| 990 | December 2022 | $3,113,730 | $4,558,085 | $2,720,925 | IRS |
| 990 | December 2021 | – | – | – | IRS |
| 990 | December 2020 | – | – | – | IRS |
| 990 | December 2018 | – | – | – | IRS |
990-N: the IRS bulk file holds only the latest e-Postcard per organization; earlier years come from archived copies of that file since 2020 and can have gaps (the IRS e-Postcard search lists every one). 990, 990-EZ, 990-PF, 990-T: every e-filed return in the IRS e-file index since 2019; XML for the latest three processing years, amounts from the IRS Statistics of Income extracts before that. PDF copies and determination letters at the IRS (search EIN 26-1906629).
Questions about IOLA FOUNDATION
- What is the EIN of IOLA FOUNDATION?
- The employer identification number (EIN) of IOLA FOUNDATION is 26-1906629.
- Is IOLA FOUNDATION tax-exempt?
- Yes. The IRS lists it as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) since 2008.
- Are donations to IOLA FOUNDATION tax-deductible?
- Yes. It is listed in IRS Publication 78 (Public charity, 50% deduction limit).
- Which annual return does IOLA FOUNDATION file?
- Form 990 or 990-EZ. Based on its last return; a smaller organization may file the 990-N.
- When is the next return of IOLA FOUNDATION due?
- The return for tax year 2026 (the year ending December 31, 2026) is due May 17, 2027. Form 8868 extends it by six months; the 990-N cannot be extended.
- When did IOLA FOUNDATION last file with the IRS?
- The latest return in the IRS public files is the 990 for the year ended December 2025.
- Who is the principal officer of IOLA FOUNDATION?
- The 990 for the year ended December 31, 2025 names Paul Dien.
- Who are the officers and directors of IOLA FOUNDATION?
- The 990 for the year ended December 31, 2025 lists 13 people; 3 received compensation from the organization, the highest $178,469 (Brian Wenke, Chief Executive Officer).
- How much revenue does IOLA FOUNDATION have?
- On its 990 for the year ended December 31, 2025 it reported revenue of $1,792,286, expenses of $1,536,938 and total assets of $719,525 at year end.
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