The Thacher School looks durable. The school holds 4.8 years of operating cushion, on the lighter end for a boarding school. Revenue is unusually diversified at 33% tuition-dependent (HiveCheck peer-group median 85%), with the endowment and gifts carrying real weight. Staff compensation runs 29% of expenses, well below the peer median, worth understanding why. NACUBO Composite Financial Index: 5.3 / 10, strong.
The Thacher School runs only 33% tuition-dependent — unusually diversified for an independent school. Endowment payout and contributions carry meaningful weight in the operating budget.
The Thacher School reported $60.8M in revenue against $59.4M in expenses in fiscal year 2024, the most recent filing on record. Net assets stood at $287.8M — about 4.85x annual operating expense.
Operating margin landed at 2.3%, with 32.7% of revenue coming from tuition. Among same-size peers, that puts The Thacher School at the p30 on operating margin.
Ten panels on The Thacher School: financial health, peer comparison, community demographics, paying & giving capacity, competitive position, enrollment demand, leadership compensation, governance — and the questions to ask. One subscription opens every school.
Ten panels. One school. A year of access.
$250 a year — or $100 the first year for the founding 100.
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.