Salisbury Academy looks durable. Reserves cover 7 months of operating expense, a thin runway. Revenue runs 71% tuition-dependent (HiveCheck peer-group median 85%), diversified by day-school standards, with meaningful contribution and investment income. Staff compensation runs 60% of expenses, well below the peer median, worth understanding why. NACUBO Composite Financial Index: 7.2 / 10, strong.
Salisbury Academy reported $4.9M in revenue against $4.2M in expenses in fiscal year 2024, the most recent filing on record. Net assets stood at $2.3M — about 0.55x annual operating expense.
Operating margin landed at 13.3%, with 71.2% of revenue coming from tuition. Among same-size peers, that puts Salisbury Academy at the p90 on operating margin.
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Why “revenue scale” and not “endowment per student”: independent-school 990s don’t carry per-school enrollment, and NCES PSS coverage is partial, so we cannot divide endowment by a verified student count for every school. The bar above is each school’s latest reported total revenue. True endowment-per-student is scheduled for v1.1+ once Schedule D Part V parsing lands.
Peers are scored by similarity along three equal-weighted dimensions: size cohort (Form 990 employee count + max-revenue tier, a proxy for student enrollment, which the 990 does not carry), geographic region (eight-region grouping), and association overlap (NAIS, NBOA, regional councils). We rank the top 20 nearest peers and chart the first 12 by latest reported revenue. Values are the school’s most recently filed total revenue on IRS Form 990.