Tool · pre-publication review
Before you file, see exactly how your Form 990 will read on Ihsan Standard after the IRS publishes it.
Same anomaly detectors. Same expense bucketing. Same fundraising-efficacy and comp-benchmarking analysis. The only difference: you control the timing. If a flag fires that has a legitimate explanation, you have months to pre-stage the context note and pre-flight the Schedule J narrative before publication. If a number is genuinely off, you can fix the bookkeeping before the filing locks.
Tool access is gated to org leadership. The general public doesn’t need to see what an unfiled draft looks like, so we ask org reps to sign in. Nothing is stored on Ihsan Standard servers — the analysis runs entirely in your browser session.
Each card is rendered by the same component that drives the same analysis on every published org page in the Ihsan Standard directory.
Every flag we run against published filings — fundraising-cost ratio, fundraising-vs-grants spread, single-contractor concentration, thin operating reserves, comp/revenue ratio — fires against your draft. You see what donors will see, before donors see it.
Grants & assistance vs. program services vs. management & general vs. fundraising — visualized as the same horizontal stacked bar that renders on every published org page. If the col-A/B/C/D split isn't in your draft yet, we fall back to compensation-derived bucketing using the line items you do have.
Dollars of contributions raised per dollar of fundraising spend, with health-band classification (Excellent / Healthy / Acceptable / Concerning / Net-negative) and a multi-year line chart against last year's filing. The single most useful efficacy ratio donors look at.
Where this filing's top-officer comp ratio sits in the Ihsan Standard cohort distribution, plus a peer-category percentile and a mainstream-nonprofit comparison from published Candid figures. If the comp ratio is in the upper tail, we surface a pre-staged Schedule J narrative checklist.
Per-metric YoY direction (revenue, expenses, investment income, compensation, net assets, reserve months) with sparklines. If anything is growing in a way that's worth a closer look — comp outpacing revenue, fundraising growing faster than program — it shows up here.
If a flag fires and you have a legitimate explanation (capital campaign, FQHC staffing, multi-year grant schedule), you can draft the context note now. Once the filing publishes and Ihsan Standard ingests it, the engagement track attaches your note alongside the flag with equal visual weight.
01
Most orgs first see their 990 read back to them by Charity Navigator or a journalist. By then there's nothing to do but respond. Pre-flight reverses that — you read your own filing the way a critical donor will, while you still have time to change either the filing or the explanation.
02
When the comp ratio is in the upper tail of the cohort, we walk you through the legitimate-explanation checklist Schedule J Part III asks for. Comp-consultant review, joint appointments, professional credentialing — the answers donors deserve, written down before they ask.
03
Sometimes a flag fires because the bookkeeping rolled an expense to the wrong functional bucket (admin instead of program, or program instead of grants). Catch it in pre-flight; have your bookkeeper fix it before filing. Once filed, it stays public for a decade.
Suppose an org runs a successful capital campaign and the year’s fundraising expense lands at 32% of total expenses — above the 25% threshold our anomaly detector fires on. The detector publishes the flag. Without context, a journalist reading the published 990 sees:
“Org X spent 32% of expenses on fundraising — well above the 25% best-practice threshold.”
With the pre-flight pre-staged note attached via the engagement track, the same flag publishes with this context immediately alongside it:
“FY 2025 captured a capital-campaign cycle — the org-side investment in donor acquisition is expected to amortize over the next 3 years of recurring giving. By FY 2027 the ratio is projected to return to the 12–15% range. Board approved the campaign budget against documented multi-year ROI projections in [meeting date]; see minutes [link].”
Same flag. Same numbers. Different story — because the org saw the question coming and answered it.
Sign in to run the tool. You can iterate — tweak any number, see how the metrics move, then export the report to bring to your board, treasurer, or auditor before filing.