Ihsan Standard Listed · Last verified 2026-05-21

Karam Foundation Nfp

EIN 371548241 · Chicago, IL · — · cause-specific

Address2045 W GRAND AVE STE B PMB 88293, Chicago, IL 60612-1577

Mission · 990 Part I
“KARAM FOUNDATION IS DEDICATED TO HELP PEOPLE HELP THEMSELVES. WE SEEK TO RESTORE THE DIGNITY AND QUALITY OF LIFE FOR PEOPLE AFFECTED BY CONFLICT BY ELIMINATING BARRIERS TO SUCCESS THROUGH INNOVATIVE EDUCATION, ENTREPRENEURIAL DEVELOPMENT, AND COMMUNITY-DRIVEN AID.”

Attestations & audits0 / 12

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Fiscal year← Directory Sector stats →

Most recent filing on fileFY 2023

The IRS Form 990 for FY 2024 is due ~Nov 15 of the year after the fiscal close, followed by 3–6 months of IRS processing and 6–12 months before the cleaned data is published. FY 2024 should begin appearing here around mid-to-late 2025. A gap between today and the latest filing does not mean the org hasn't filed.

Revenue

$4.6M

Expenses

$3.7M

Net assets

$4.7M

Months of reserve?

14.9 mo

▸Additional financials & ratios

Top-officer comp

$214K

Contributions

$4.6M

Investment income

Total assets

$4.9M

Fundraising-cost ratio

0.0%

Total-comp ratio

34.6%

Liquidity (months)

14.9 mo

Investment income / rev

0.0%

Attestations & Audits

Org-supplied disclosures that have been verified by the Ihsan Standard Editorial Council. Every standard has a Gold tier (★) reached via an Ihsan Standard or accepted third-party audit. An empty section means the org has not yet filled it in — not that they fail the standard.

Completed

0 / 12

0 ★ Gold

Zakat methodology disclosurenot yet attested
Zakāt al-Fitr timeline commitmentnot yet attested
Qurbānī / Udhiya timeline enforcementnot yet attested
Kaffāra fulfillment commitmentnot yet attested
Annual zakat distribution reportnot yet attested
Orphan-fund segregation (Qurʾānic amāna)not yet attested
Restricted-purpose fund segregation (honoring the amāna)not yet attested
Per-donation tracking & fulfillmentnot yet attested
Supplier-stack cleanup plan filednot yet attested
Full supplier-stack audit completednot yet attested
Taʿāwun Procurement Audit — Muslim community vendor pledgenot yet attested
Khulafāʾ al-Arḍ Environmental Stewardship Auditnot yet attested

Filing observations & context

1 concerning

Specific datapoints from Karam Foundation Nfp's most recent IRS Form 990 that warrant a closer look. Each item is computed directly from the org's own public filing — we explain what the datapoint is, what it might mean, and the legitimate reasons it could be present. Read these as context, not conclusions.

Grant recipients on Schedule I aren't fully identified
concerning
0 Schedule I grants lack a recipient name/EIN; 3 list an EIN that doesn't match any IRS-registered org.
What this means
On Schedule I — where the org lists every grant it made to other organizations — three or more rows are missing the recipient name + EIN, or the listed EIN doesn't match any organization registered with the IRS.
Why it matters (and what it might not mean)
Schedule I exists so donors can trace a charity's grants to actual recipient organizations. Missing or unverifiable recipient details make that trace impossible, which a donor's right to do. In many real cases this is a data-entry shortfall (e.g. small recurring grants without the recipient EIN looked up) — but it's also where the most opaque fund flows hide, so we surface it.
show underlying numbers
```
{
  "grants_without_id": 0,
  "grants_with_unverifiable_ein": 3,
  "total_grants": 3,
  "sample_unverifiable": [
    {
      "name": "FINDING REFUGE",
      "ein": "842009994"
    },
    {
      "name": "Paper Airplanes Inc",
      "ein": "814278267"
    },
    {
      "name": "Reaching Across Borders",
      "ein": "852397845"
    }
  ]
}
```

Where the money went · FY 2023

Form 990 Part IX (Statement of Functional Expenses) split into the four functional buckets, plus automated anomaly detection across the most-asked donor questions.

Expense breakdown · FY 2023

Total $3.75M

Form 990 Part IX line items we have on file for this filing (compensation totals + fundraising lines). The full functional-expense col-A/B/C/D split (grants, program, admin, fundraising) was not in the structured extract — the residual sits in “Program & operations” below. Reading note: compensation is NOT the same as “admin overhead” — for orgs running clinics (like IMAN’s FQHC), schools, or in-house programs, most of compensation is program work.

% to compensation

34.6%

$1.30M

% to fundraising

0.0%

% to program & operations

65.4%

$2.45M

Total expenses

$3.75M

FY 2023

35%

65%

Compensation & benefits$1.30M · 34.6%
Form 990 Part IX lines 5–10 — total staff compensation: salaries & wages, payroll taxes, and benefits across everyone the org pays (program, clinical, and support staff), plus any pay to officers, directors, and key employees. The per-person split — including which officers, if any, are paid — is in the Compensation history section below. For orgs running clinics, schools, or in-house programs, most of this is program work, not admin.
Program & operations (other)$2.45M · 65.4%
Total expenses minus compensation and fundraising — the residual covering program supplies, occupancy & utilities, professional fees, beneficiary services, medical supplies (for clinics), travel, equipment, and depreciation. ProPublica's structured extract did not include the Part IX functional split for this filing year; the breakdown PDF reconciles which specific lines went where.

Fundraising efficacy · not the primary lens for this org

Karam Foundation Nfp reports $4.55M in contributions on only $0 of fundraising spend — a ratio that suggests this org isn't fundraising-driven in the conventional sense. The Form 990 “fundraising expense” line item is meant to capture solicitation costs (telemarketing, direct mail, digital ad spend); for universities, masjids, foundations, and orgs primarily supported by major gifts or program revenue, that line is small or zero, and the resulting “ratio” reads as meaningless.

The right operational-efficiency lens for an org like this is reserves, payroll composition, and program-expense ratio — see the financial-anomalies section and the multi-year trend dashboard.

Year-over-year trends · through FY 2023

Arrow color = direction × good-when-up

Per-metric direction and magnitude vs. the prior fiscal year. Where the data goes back far enough, the 3-year compound annual growth rate is included — useful for separating one-off spikes from sustained trends.

Revenue↑ 89.2% YoY
$4.56Mprior: $2.41M
Δ +$2.15M3y CAGR +11.1%
Total revenue per Form 990 Part I line 12.
Contributions↑ 90.1% YoY
$4.55Mprior: $2.40M
Δ +$2.16M3y CAGR +11.0%
Form 990 Part I line 1h — gifts, grants, and contributions received.
Investment income→ n/a
$0prior: $0
Form 990 Part VIII line 4 — interest, dividends, and other investment earnings on the org's reserve. For orgs with material reserves, a healthy investment-income trend indicates capital is actually working; near-zero income on a large reserve raises the 'idle capital' question.
Total expenses↑ 34.6% YoY
$3.75Mprior: $2.78M
Δ +$964K3y CAGR +7.1%
Form 990 Part I line 18 — total functional expenses.
Top-officer compensation↑ 81.6% YoY
$214Kprior: $118K
Δ +$96K3y CAGR +37.5%
Form 990 Part IX line 5 — aggregate compensation for officers, directors, key employees, and the five highest-paid employees. Growing in line with revenue is expected for healthy orgs; growing faster than revenue is the question worth asking.
Total compensation & benefits↑ 19.7% YoY
$1.30Mprior: $1.08M
Δ +$213K3y CAGR +10.4%
Officer comp + other salaries + payroll tax — total people-cost of running the org.
Net assets↑ 14.0% YoY
$4.66Mprior: $4.09M
Δ +$572K3y CAGR +5.6%
Form 990 Part X line 33 — assets minus liabilities at year end.
Months of reserve↓ -15.3% YoY
14.9 moprior: 17.6 mo
Δ −2.7 mo3y CAGR -1.4%
Net assets ÷ (annual expenses ÷ 12). The trend matters more than the absolute number: a falling reserve year-over-year is the early warning sign of fragility, even if it's still above the 3-month floor.

No financial anomalies surfaced

For the most recent fiscal year on file, the automated checks (fundraising-cost ratio, single-contractor concentration, reserve adequacy, officer-comp share) did not flag anything. This is the default state for most orgs and is meaningful — it means the math on Form 990 Part IX and Part VII Section B doesn’t require an explanation.

▸

Multi-year history

click to expand

Year	Revenue	Expenses	Net assets	Contributions	Officer/KE comp	Inv. income
2023	$4.6M	$3.7M	$4.7M	$4.6M	$214K	$0
2022	$2.4M	$2.8M	$4.1M	$2.4M	$118K	$0
2021	$2.8M	$2.5M	$4.2M	$2.8M	$94K	$0
2020	$3.3M	$3.0M	$4.0M	$3.3M	$82K	$0
2019	$5.2M	$3.7M	$3.7M	$5.1M	$97K	$0
2018	$3.1M	$3.8M	$2.2M	$3.0M	$0	$0
2017	$4.0M	$2.8M	$2.9M	$3.8M	$81K	$2K
2016	$3.2M	$2.1M	$1.7M	$3.2M	$62K	$0
2015	$1.3M	$970K	$654K	$1.2M	$50K	$0
2014	$945K	$889K	$306K	$928K	$0	$0
2013	$656K	$477K	$214K	$656K	$0	$0
2012	$252K	$239K	$35K	$252K	$0	$0

Areas where engagement could help — ethical supplier stack

1 flag detected

We detected 1 vendor on Karam Foundation Nfp's public website that appear on widely-followed Muslim-community watch lists (BDS, Project Nimbus contractors, documented content-suppression, or Uyghur-surveillance context). Per the §I “transparency over imposition” principle, we publish the facts and the cited basis — we do not adjudicate which boycotts are religiously obligatory. Each donor decides.

Stripe
payment-processor
Stripe Inc. — co-founder Patrick Collison has made publicly documented donations and statements supporting positions adverse to Muslim humanitarian causes at material scale. Appears on community boycott discussions. Verify current status before publishing org-level findings.
Evidence found — view
- https://karamfoundation.org#homepage-network — ded/_next/static/chunks/614.b0cb5c8ff6bcd017.js"></script> <script src="https://js.stripe.com/v3"></script> <script src="https://giving.classy.org/embedded/api/…
- https://karamfoundation.org#homepage-network — /js/m-outer-15a2b40a058ddff1cffdb63779fe3de1.js"></script> <script src="https://m.stripe.network/inner.html"></script> <script src="https://api.everypregnancy.o…

Path forward (no judgment — engagement-track)

Most orgs we scan don’t know which of their analytics or payment vendors appear on community watch lists — they inherited the choice from a template or an ads-manager setup. Alternatives exist for every flagged vendor (Helcim/Stax for payment, Plausible/Fathom for analytics, self-hosted PostHog for session replay).

The Ihsan Standard Supplier-Stack Audit goes further than the public-website scan above. We inventory the full vendor stack — payment processors, hosting, CRM, accounting, ad-tech, the back-office tools that don’t show up in HTML — identify ethical alternatives for each, and build a realistic transition timeline staffed against the org’s actual calendar. The audit output is a vendor-by-vendor switch plan, not a shame-list.

Paired with the Khulafāʾ al-Arḍ Stewardship Audit (environmental footprint of sites and vendors, in partnership with the Art and Wilderness Institute’s Green Masjid Initiative), this is the engagement-track ladder we offer every org. See the Attestations & Audits section above for the full set.

1 potential signal (lower confidence) — view

These matches came from broader patterns that can be false positives (e.g. a legacy Google SDK loaded for both YouTube embeds and Sign-In). Treat as “worth a manual check,” not as confirmed.

Vercel · low confidence
Vercel Inc. — US-headquartered (San Francisco). The company's founder/CEO has made publicly-documented statements supporting Israel that have drawn community pushback. NOT in the same category as IDF-…

Method: automatic vendor detection from public website data. Watch-list basis is the documented public reason each vendor appears on community lists (BDS, Don’t Buy Into Occupation, U.S. Dept. of Commerce Entity List, etc.) — not Ihsan Standard’s own editorial judgment. See the ethical-supplier rubric for the full methodology.

Compensation history

Form 990 Part VII Section A · 9 filings on record

Every officer, director, key employee, and highest-compensated employee with reported pay. Recent year is shown by default — switch tabs for prior years or the unique-people roll-up.

FY 2023

2 paid · 8 unpaid board · total $213K

Name	Title	From org	Related orgs	Other	Total
Lina Sergie Attar	Ceo	$122K	$0	$0	$122K
Rula Jamous	Treas.& Dr.Fin.	$91K	$0	$0	$91K

Grants made · Schedule I

The organizations and people Karam Foundation Nfp re-granted money to, as reported on IRS Form 990 Schedule I. Total disbursed across these3 grants: $77K.

Recipient	Amount	Purpose	Year
Paper Airplanes Inc EIN 814278267	$42K	General Support	2023
Reaching Across Borders EIN 852397845	$27K	General Support	2023
FINDING REFUGE EIN 842009994	$7K	General Support	2023

▸

Verticals · detected automatically

3 detected · click to expand

Signals automatically extracted from public website data on https://karamfoundation.org— please verify against the source link before relying on any single tag. “Unknown” means no evidence was found, not that the org doesn’t offer it.

· Public zakat policy · Scholar board listed publicly · Accepts appreciated stock · Accepts DAF gifts · Accepts crypto · Endowment or waqf · Estate & wasiyya (planned giving)· Corporate matching program · Form 990 linked from website

Evidence captured

Recurring giving
yes
“karam scholars karam studios karam families the journey our monthly giving program helps displaced syrians rebuild their lives and ret”
Detected automatically from public website data — please verify.View source →
Valid SSL on donate pageDonation forms served over valid HTTPS.
indicative
Evidence found in markup — view
```
https://karamfoundation.org
```
Detected automatically from public website data — please verify.View source →
Payment processor detected
indicative
Evidence found in markup — view
```
Classy
```
Detected automatically from public website data — please verify.View source →
Processors: Classy

In their own words · Schedule O

Supplemental narratives the org wrote on IRS Form 990 Schedule O — program-activity descriptions, governance explanations, and answers to specific 990 line items. Useful primary-source context that doesn’t fit into the structured fields elsewhere on this page.

Form 990, Part VI, Section A, Line 2
FY 2023
AYA SAMMAN (BOARD MEMBER) AND LINA SERGIE ATTAR (CEO/FOUNDER) HAVE A FAMILYRELATIONSHIP
Form 990, Part VI, Section A, Line 8b
FY 2023
THE ORGANIZATION HAS NO INDIVIDUAL COMMITTIES. ALL DECISIONS ARE MADE AT THE BOARD LEVEL.
Form 990, Part VI, Section B, Line 11b
FY 2023
THE IRS FORM 990 WAS REVIEWED BY THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS PRIOR TO FILING.