insights
field guides for reading IRS filings and seeing what funders actually do.
-
what you can learn from a 990 in 2 minutes
what you'll learn the five questions that reveal how an organization actually works, from revenue model to leadership to where the money really goes, without reading the full filing.
-
questions to ask before submitting a proposal
what you'll learn the questions worth answering before you commit staff time, whether a funder actually fits, what ask size is realistic, whether they fund new grantees, and how to pressure-test a draft against their past giving.
-
the public benchmark protocol
what you'll learn how to test any nonprofit research tool, aysra included, against the fields a filing actually contains, which questions have a checkable answer, which ones a tool has to refuse or invent, and how to tell an honest result from a confident guess.
-
how to read a 990-PF
what you'll learn where the real signal lives in a 990-PF, who gets funded, how often, and what patterns repeat, plus which sections you can safely ignore.
-
why post-2020 is the operative window for foundation behavior
what you'll learn why the years since 2020 are the honest window for reading a foundation, and how leaning on older filings can misstate what a funder actually prioritizes, how much it gives, and who it supports today.