Seattle Art Museum: $30.0M Revenue, $37.1M Expenses

Seattle Art Museum pulls a D on the efficiency rubric. The composite of 39/100 reflects below-median performance on the bundle of factors — typically driven by thin operating reserves, volatile revenue, or outsized officer compensation relative to organizational size.

Seattle Art Museum reported $30.0M in 2023 revenue — a mid-sized nonprofit by U.S. standards. Organizations in this bracket typically operate with a small permanent staff, project-based program structures, and modest reserves. On the financial-health factor, Seattle Art Museum runs thin — assets relative to annual spending fall below the cushion nonprofit-finance experts typically recommend.

Five-year revenue trend is mildly negative: a modest decline that could reflect grant-cycle timing, donor turnover, or program wind-down. Worth checking against the program-spending pattern to see whether the decline is structural. Officer compensation is on the higher side of the band typical for nonprofits this size: $1.3M in total current-officer compensation against $30.0M in revenue. Not necessarily inappropriate — large healthcare systems and university systems often pay competitively with for-profit equivalents — but worth reading in context. Seattle Art Museum sits in the cultural-nonprofit sector (Arts, Culture & Humanities). Museum, performing-arts, and cultural organizations carry distinctive financial patterns — earned revenue from ticket sales and admissions, plus a heavy reliance on endowment income and major donor cycles.