TALKING EYES MEDIA INC

Financials

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, 2024, highest compensation first.

Address and contacts

Address (IRS master file)

110 MONTCLAIR AVE, MONTCLAIR, NJ 07042-4131

In care of

% JULIE WINOKUR

Signed the 990

Julie Winokur, Executive Director

Phone

(973) 901-3032

Website

talkingeyesmedia.org

Return prepared by

MAUREEN A LEIDL CPA

Mission

Talking Eyes Media (TEM) creates powerful media for pressing issues. The Organization includes visual storytellers who create documentary films, photography, books, exhibitions and public programming that actively stimulate dialogue and advocate for positive social change. Talking Eyes turns a probing eye on situations where people struggle unduly, where resources are poorly distributed, and where theres tremendous opportunity to improve society for future generations. The work is used extensively by educational institutions, nonprofit organizations and foundations to illuminate, educate and inspire people to become more engaged.

Program accomplishments

• Production Services In 2024, Talking Eyes Media (TEM) marked its 21st anniversary and TEM continued to share our ongoing projects while pursuing several new initiatives. TEM was also honored to have Executive Director Julie Winokur named one of 76 artists to be awarded an Individual Artist Fellowship from the New Jersey State Council for the Arts. This competitive prize acknowledges an outstanding contribution to the arts in New Jersey.Talking Eyes Medias project Newest Americans continues to be a valuable resource for educators and the general public, and TEM continued to deploy the Newark Story Bus to events in the city of Newark. This multi-year digital media project examines immigration and American identity. Developed in partnership with Rutgers University-Newark and VII Photo, Newest Americans produces short films, radio pieces, written essays, exhibitions and public events that explore the lives and communities, trials and aspirations of Americas diverse immigrant population. The project was awarded Best Online Storytelling Project in 2021 by Pictures of the Year International.Through Newest Americans, TEM has developed partnerships with Audible, Newark Museum of Art, Newark Public Library, NJPAC and Newark Symphony Hall to share our media and engage in conversations with local thought leaders. The goal has been to activate and collaborate with the anchor cultural institutions in the city to provide compelling content to a broad audience.With support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, Newest Americans created the Newark Story Bus. This retrofitted former school bus serves as a mobile media lab to collect stories throughout the city at community events, schools and businesses. It is also used to educate students on basic media skills. In 2023, TEM partnered with Audible to activate the bus at two community events: one geared toward local entrepreneurs and one focused on senior citizens. From these activations, TEM produced short videos that highlighted the participants stories and shared the voices of Newark residents with a larger audience. TEM also activated the bus in partnership with Lives in Translation, a Rutgers-based program that engages students in working as translators.Through TEM's content from the bus, TEM produced a series of short videos featuring Newark residents who have first-hand experience of the Great Migration. This series of six animated shorts was released in early 2024 for Black History Month. The shorts reveal family histories that show how the Great Migration is not part of the distant past, but very present in the neighborhoods, art, music, food and culture of present-day Newark.The TEM film, Bring It to The Table, continues to be licensed by universities across the country through our distribution partner, Kanopy. This film addresses political partisanship and each citizens responsibility in bridging the divide. As a result of this work, the TEM Executive Director, Julie Winokur was invited to give a keynote presentation at the Madeira School in Virginia in 2024.TEMs film, The Sacrifice Zone, had ten screenings during the year, all followed by engaging discussions around environmental justice, structural racism, and waste removal. The film follows a group of activists in Newarks Ironbound neighborhood as they fight for clean air. TEM invites environmental justice activists who appear in the film to engage in post-screening discussions. The screenings have been hosted by grassroots organizers, concerned citizens and educators. This work builds on TEM's over 50 screenings in the past two years, as well as touring the film festival circuit. As of this year, the film has been acquired for the permanent collections of 16 higher education libraries.TEM produced six videos for the James Irvine Leadership Awards in 2024 featuring nonprofits in California that address black maternal health, library services, Native American food sovereignty, and diversity in the film industry.In early 2024, with a grant from Amplifier, TEM traveled to Georgia to ask young voters about the issues they cared about and their perspectives on the upcoming elections. TEM interviewed, filmed and photographed over a dozen participants in a voter engagement boot camp hosted by the Georgia Youth Justice Coalition. TEM developed partnerships with local and national organizations like the ACLU of Georgia and Alliance for Youth Action to identify their strategic needs. We edited our interviews into a series of short videos for social media and offered them to our partners to help mobilize young voters. The videos received thousands of views, were used in college voting toolkits, and circulated through newsletters.TEM returned to Georgia to interview and photograph young conservative voters. This resulted in an online publication in Mother Jones Magazine. The Instagram video for this story spurred a robust online engagement and over 50,000 views.American Sketches is a new long-term project that we are producing that explores the fabric of America in this deeply divided and explosive time in our history. In 2024, TEM returned to Eagle Pass, Texas, and the Mississippi Delta to develop their relationships with local characters while diving deeper into these iconic places. In Eagle Pass, which is located on the Rio Grande, mass migration overshadows a small town where over 95% of the residents have Mexican roots. In the Mississippi Delta, TEM is profiling two farming families, one Black and one White, whose experience of the land and their place in it has been shaped by race.Selected vignettes from American Sketches were published in the 2024 issue of The Raw Society magazine, a publication dedicated to sharing compelling and important photographic stories. The issue features 306 pages filled with photography and in-depth storytelling from around the world. The magazine won 1st place in the Self-Published Book category of the 2024 International Photography awards.Smithsonian magazine published TEM's latest work on heat stress, highlighting the worlds first Chief Heat Officer, Jane Gilbert, and Miami-Dade Countys efforts to support a broad coalition of partners who are working hard to keep the city cool. In Miami, where temperatures run in the 90s for months at a time, the heat season now extends through October. An Extreme Heat Action Plan offers coalition partners guidance for how to inform, prepare and protect residents from rising temperatures. This plan, along with other efforts, TEM reported in Smithsonian Magazine, offer a model for other cities to follow.Last year, TEM helped launch 1 in 6, a collaborative project that brings together photographers from around the world to put a human face on aging. By 2030, 1 in 6 people on the planet will be over 60 years old. To date, this project has engaged 80 professional photographers from 42 countries, and their work has appeared in several international publications to highlight different aspects and cultural approaches to an aging population. The project will generate an archive of tremendous historical significance.For over a decade, TEM has worked with the La Isla Foundation to tell the story of how extreme heat increases kidney disease. Our film PREP for Change was one of seven films selected for the final round entries in the International Society of Nephrology (ISN) Community Film Event. Films selected honored patients, celebrated healthcare providers, and promoted kidney health awareness.
  Expenses $342,887
• Permissions Permissions or licensing fees grant the right to republish photos, video and text from TEM projects.
• Honoraria Talking Eyes staff and contributors received $5500 in honoraria to present Talking Eyes projects to diverse audiences. Over the past year, our Executive Director, Julie Winokur, and the protagonists from the film presented The Sacrifice Zone at 10 in-person screenings, which were followed by robust post-screening discussion. Julie also presented a keynote address about Bring It to the Table at the Madeira School in Virginia.
• Streaming Sales Talking Eyes Medias (TEM'S) films sell predominantly to educational institutions, libraries, colleges, universities, and the community based organizations. TEM's titles include The Sacrifice Zone, Bring It to The Table, Aging in America, and The Sandwich Generation. TEM's films earned over $4000 in streaming license fees from various organizations.
• Web TEMs projects are all available via the web. The TEM project Newest Americans had 45,000 page views in 2024 and TEM films were seen extensively through The New York Times, National Geographic, Time, and NPR online. The Sacrifice Zone website had over 8,000 page views. The Short films TEM produce for nonprofits and foundations are also available online through their websites as well as the TEM website.
• Education The TEM team taught multi-media skills to students around the world through online workshops. TEM also mentored several aspiring filmmakers over the course of the year, as well as several Rutgers student interns for Newest Americans.
• Exhibition and Screenings TEM films screened at film festivals, community events, conferences and classrooms across the country, most of which are available to the general public and most of which were streamed online.

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.

IRS record

EIN

68-0516923

Tax-exempt status

501(c)(3): Charitable, religious, educational or scientific organization

Foundation status

Publicly supported organization (509(a)(2))

Donations deductible (Pub 78)

Public charity, 50% deduction limit

Exempt since

2002

Accounting year ends

December

Files

Form 990 or 990-EZ

Category (NTEE)

Arts, culture and humanities (A32)

Assets (IRS master file)

$196,759

Income (IRS master file)

$282,591

Filing history

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 68-0516923).

Questions about TALKING EYES MEDIA INC

What is the EIN of TALKING EYES MEDIA INC?

The employer identification number (EIN) of TALKING EYES MEDIA INC is 68-0516923.

Is TALKING EYES MEDIA INC tax-exempt?

Yes. The IRS lists it as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) since 2002.

Are donations to TALKING EYES MEDIA INC tax-deductible?

Yes. It is listed in IRS Publication 78 (Public charity, 50% deduction limit).

Which annual return does TALKING EYES MEDIA INC 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 TALKING EYES MEDIA INC due?

The return for tax year 2025 (the year ending December 31, 2025) is due May 15, 2026. Form 8868 extends it by six months; the 990-N cannot be extended.

When did TALKING EYES MEDIA INC last file with the IRS?

The latest return in the IRS public files is the 990 for the year ended December 2024.

Who are the officers and directors of TALKING EYES MEDIA INC?

The 990 for the year ended December 31, 2024 lists 6 people; 2 received compensation from the organization, the highest $74,615 (Julie Winokur, Executive Director).

How much revenue does TALKING EYES MEDIA INC have?

On its 990 for the year ended December 31, 2024 it reported revenue of $282,591, expenses of $378,656 and total assets of $196,759 at year end.

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