Independent record of a foundation’s 990-PF. What your foundation’s return says is still to be paid out, and the date it is due.
Its filed 990-PF, re-done line by line by someone who did not prepare it. Free, in seconds.
- 11,842 filed returns re-done
- 1,794 periods the filer filed again, both versions kept
- 160% of the required minimum, actually given
- $19.7 billion carried into the next year on the latest returns, each with its date
What comes back, and who checked it
Its e-filed 990-PF comes back from the IRS with every line re-done by a party that did not prepare it, and sealed: written once, and any rewrite shows. To the dollar and the day, before the board or the auditor asks, and checkable by anyone you send it to.
From the study of every foundation’s latest return. The return beside this is a real one, and every figure in it is yours to change.
Independent by design: no return prepared, no grant paid, no asset held, no advice, no fee on assets, nothing paid to a firm for its clients. Whether any figure met a requirement is counsel’s question, not ours.
What do we still owe, and by when?
The first line of every proof: the amount still to be paid out, and the date it is due. A year’s amount may be paid through the end of the next year, so it is owed and dated, not late until the date passes. How the 5% payout is computed.
31 December 2026By then a calendar-year foundation distributes the undistributed income its 2025 return reports (Part XII, line 6f).
- The 5% figure
- agrees
- The excise tax
- agrees
- The amount to pay out
- agrees
- Paid out against it
- reported
- The deadline
- reported
- Holdings listed
- not reported
- Its own answers
- reported
- Filed on time
- reported
- Matches last year
- not checked
Why these totals differ from each other
11,842 is every foundation’s latest return, re-done; 10,807 are those whose payout the form measures (domestic, not operating, with an amount to distribute); 10,947 are those whose latest return carries Part XII at all, including years with nothing to distribute. Nine controls are run on each return; the 32 on Trust are the ones we run on ourselves.
Is the return right?
Your CPA firm prepares it. We re-do it, from the IRS’s own file. 11,827 of 11,842 returns agree on every line we re-do: the arithmetic is almost always right. The date is what gets missed.
Is the 5% minimum investment return right?
Is the excise tax right?
Is the amount to be paid out right?
Six more checks on every proof
Payout coverage · Payout deadline · Holdings tie-out · The foundation's own answers · Filing timeliness · Year-to-year continuity. Each answers in one of six words: agrees, differs, reported, not reported, not applicable, not checked.
Compliant is a word we never use; it is counsel's, not ours. A line that differs is a question for the preparer, not a finding. What each check reads: for foundations.
Now do it to your own.
The return at the top of this page is a real one, and the check ran in your browser — no account, nothing sent to us. The same thing happens to yours.
Anyone can check a seal without us. For your auditor: how it is kept · the open seal format · the public log · 11,842 returns, re-done
A trustee answers for decisions made years ago, on numbers nobody kept.
The public filing shows the figures. It does not show what the committee saw, decided or approved, or on which numbers. The record is the contemporaneous answer, kept where nobody, us included, can rewrite it.
The examination: The IRS asks about a year three chairs ago.
Pull up exactly what was filed and what was checked, dated and unchanged, for your advisor.
The new chair: Why is the spending rate what it is, and who set it?
Hand over every year's numbers in one link, not a box of binders.
The family: A dispute over a gift, and what the committee saw when it decided.
Everyone reads the same sealed numbers, and the date each one was sealed.
The auditor: How was that manager kept, on which numbers?
The attorney general: How was the restricted gift invested?
The next preparer: What did the last one file, and does this year's opening balance agree?
When asked, the record shows the return re-done by someone who did not prepare it, each decision with its date, figures and approver, and a fingerprint anyone can check. Whether a standard was met is for counsel; the record makes sure the facts exist.
Three layers. One price each.
Each layer holds what the one below cannot. A flat price by size, never a fee on assets.
Free, for any foundation from $10M: $0 The sealed 990-PF proof
The return re-done and sealed in seconds, the nine controls, the calendar ahead. Checkable by anyone you send it to. No account.
$2,600Direct, or through its firm at cost: $2,600 The Filing Record, a foundation, a year
Each filed year sealed on request beside the last; the due date as the return states it; a read seat for the firm; a verification page anyone can check. Invoiced to the foundation, or to its firm at cost with no margin. The foundation keeps the record and can take it anywhere.
$17,000–$35,000Direct, from $75M: $17,000–$35,000 The Foundation Record, a year
Everything above, plus the committee's decisions and the policy, sealed the day they are made; board packs. Over $1B by quote. From the first year, with nothing to pay at setup, and you can cancel on your own, for any reason, on the refund terms printed with it.
For the firm that prepares the return: one line on your year-end request list. For 990-PF preparers. The order.
On either paid record: cancel in writing for any reason, any time up to 30 days after your statutory 990-PF filing deadline (or 12 months from invoice, whichever is earlier): the year is refunded in full to the payer, and seals already generated remain checkable. You decide, in one line.
JR BarbieriFounder
He built his own models because no platform could answer the questions multi-generational families asked, then built ParetoAlpha so the next CFO does not have to.
No family he has worked for is named on this site, and none will be. Yours would not be either.
BA, San Francisco State University · MBA, UCAM (Murcia, Spain) · CFP® education program, UCLA Extension
What you are already thinking.
We already use Foundation Source, Foundant or Archway.
Keep them. This is the record that reads them: the return re-done by a party that did not prepare it, the committee's decisions sealed the day they are made, and a fingerprint anyone can verify without us. It replaces nothing and prepares nothing.
Our CPA firm already prepares the return.
It does, and keeps doing so. We re-do the arithmetic of the return as filed and seal it; the firm reads the record, the foundation keeps it and can take it anywhere.
What if a control says “differs”?
Then the line as filed and the same line recomputed from the return's other figures do not agree, by the amount shown. The return may carry a reason the page cannot read: a schedule filed on paper, an election, a later amendment. It is a fact of the comparison, not a finding. The page is not indexed. It is read by whoever holds the link: the person who asked for it, and anyone the foundation sends it to, its preparer first.
If almost every return recomputes, what is the record for?
The differing line was never the product. 11,827 of 11,842 returns recompute, whole-dollar rounding included. What a foundation keeps is the record. The payout owed, to the dollar and the date. Each filed year sealed on request beside the last; a seal carries the day it was made, and none can be dated earlier. The committee's decisions sealed the day they are made. And a page a trustee, an auditor or an attorney general reads without asking the preparer or us.
Who else uses it?
Nobody is named. No client goes on this site without a signed release, and none is named today; the public foundations whose returns are sealed here are not clients. What is on the record instead can be checked without us: 11,842 returns re-done in the study, 32 controls checked by machine with the last result dated on /trust, a public log stamped by an outside timestamp authority every day, and a seal format anyone may build. No SOC 2 audit has begun; /trust says so.
What happens if you disappear?
The record is yours to export any day without asking us. The seal format is open, so anyone can build a checker; the daily fingerprint is published outside the system with an independent timestamp, so a proof stays checkable whether or not we exist.
Seal the return first. Decide after.