Hear Your Song Inc

Nonprofit profile at a glance

EIN
853483842
IRS 990 coverage
2024–2024
Forms available
Form 990 2024, Form 990-EZ 2023
Location
New York, NY, USA
Phone
6465840198
Rating
83
Verdict
STRONG
Rating confidence
Moderate
Sector
Patient Services - Entertainment, Recreation

Official website

Reported finances

Revenue
$211,695
Expenses
$211,413
Assets
$158,669
Liabilities
$0

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Amounts in USD.

Leadership & pay

8 people listed

Executive titles in this filing

  • Dan Rubins (Executive Director and Co-Founder)
  • Rebecca Brudner (President)

Highest reported compensation

  • Dan Rubins (Executive Director and Co-Founder): $68,290 total reported compensation

Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2024. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.

Overview

Mission

Hear Your Song empowers children and teens living with serious illnesses and complex health needs to make their voices heard through collaborative songwriting. At the heart of our work is a "kid-driven," totally individualized process that puts every child and teen in our community - youth who live with physical and mental health diagnoses that so often deprive them of power and choice - in complete creative control. Hear Your Song supports youth songwriters through partnerships with children's hospitals and nursing homes, summer camps, schools, and diagnosis-specific organizations.

What it reported doing in 2024

Hear Your Song's central program service is our Collaborative Songwriting Program for youth with serious illnesses and complex health needs ages 6-18. In 2025, Hear Your Song served over 210 kids through partnerships with children's hospitals, nonprofits, schools, and camp programs. Hear Your Song created peer songwriting groups, live performance opportunities, and virtual song premiere events to strengthen the community of youth participating in programming and to deepen relationships among families, partner organizations, volunteers, and youth songwriters. Through our Duet-A-Doc project, youth songwriters collaborated with their longtime medical professionals to create songs together. Hear Your Song also mentored undergraduate students and other volunteers across the United States to lead songwriting sessions. Associated accomplishments include the amplification of youth songwriters' songs and voices so that their creative work can be celebrated and shared by a wide audience.

Operating model

Revenue model
Donor-supported. 88% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
Distribution model
Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.

The verdict

STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and expenses are high relative to revenue.

Rating breakdown

  • Financial Efficiency: 81
  • Transparency & Controls: 92
  • Accountability: 90
  • Sustainability: 39
  • Growth: 60

Detailed rating inputs

Financial Efficiency

  • Mission deployment rate: 86.2%; rating input score 86
  • Program expense ratio: 86.4%; rating input score 86
  • Fundraising efficiency: $11.72 raised per $1 spent on fundraising; rating input score 44; 44th percentile among comparable filings

Transparency & Controls

  • Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Pay-setting controls: Limited
  • Foreign activity oversight: Limited
  • Grant itemization coverage: Limited
  • Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
  • Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

  • Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 63rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Governance controls: 6 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 75
    • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
    • Whistleblower policy: Pass
    • Document-retention policy: Pass
    • CEO compensation review process: Pass
    • Other executive compensation review process: NotApplicable
    • Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
    • Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
    • Audit committee oversight: Missing
    • Independent financial-statement audit: Fail

Sustainability

  • Operating margin: 0.1%; rating input score 40; 40th percentile among comparable filings
  • Total-asset coverage ratio: 0.75; rating input score 33; 33rd percentile among comparable filings
  • Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 80; 80th percentile among comparable filings
  • Officer compensation ratio: 32.3%; rating input score 10; 10th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

  • Program expense growth: Limited
  • Revenue growth: 7.6% per year; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
  • Asset growth: 4.4% per year; rating input score 100; 44th percentile among comparable filings

Details

  • Where the money goes: 86.2% of revenue deployed · 86.4% of spending went to programs
  • Governance: 7 of 7 board members independent · 6 of 8 filing controls reported
  • Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $183K in reported program spending
  • Leadership: top reported pay $68K · 8 people listed
  • Consistency: 39 of 39 current checks pass
  • Schedules: 3 filed schedules · includes major donors
  • Contacts: How to reach this organization
  • Money network: 1 filed money-flow record
  • Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
  • People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.

Key Signals

Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.

  • Moderate — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 44/100.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 40/100.
  • Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Independent financial-statement audit not reported.
  • Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 33/100.
  • High — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 10/100.