Brooklyn Public Library: $163.2M Revenue, $164.3M Expenses

The efficiency rubric puts Brooklyn Public Library at a B grade: a composite of 74/100 that lands above the national midpoint. The grade reflects solid financial reserves alongside reasonable officer compensation and steady revenue.

Brooklyn Public Library is a large nonprofit by U.S. standards: $163.2M in 2023 revenue against $164.3M in expenses. Organizations in this revenue bracket usually run multiple programs with permanent staff and a meaningful endowment or reserve. Financial health is a strength: Brooklyn Public Library carries a healthy operating-reserve cushion against $164.3M in annual expenses, the kind of balance-sheet stability that helps an organization weather funding gaps without cutting programs.

Five-year revenue is essentially flat — Brooklyn Public Library's funding base appears stable but not growing. For mature organizations this is often the steady state; for younger ones it can signal a funding plateau worth diagnosing. Officer compensation is modest relative to organizational size: Brooklyn Public Library reports $1.7M in total compensation for current officers and key employees (Form 990 Part IX, line 5) against $163.2M in revenue. The ratio is well within the bands third-party charity raters consider reasonable at this scale. In the Education category, Brooklyn Public Library sits alongside universities, K-12 systems, scholarship funds, and education-research organizations. Education-sector nonprofits often hold large endowments, which affects how the reserves-and-revenue figures should be read.