Karimu International Help Foundatio

What it reported doing in 2025

Karimu international help foundation envisions a world without poverty. Our mission is to help rural communities in low-income countries lift themselves out of poverty by tackling the biggest challenges facing the poor: lack of sanitation and clean water, poor health, inadequate education, meager income, and lack of financial services. We engage deeply with communities and their governments to set priorities and devise projects that address these problems. As a result, such communities can not only sustain themselves, but thrive. Karimu believes the communities we serve understand their needs better than outsiders can, so we do not impose solutions. We decide on projects together, including in our discussions the most vulnerable community members: women, young people, and the poorest of the poor. Karimu provides counsel, funding, volunteers, and resources needed to help these communities reach their goals. Karimu recognizes that poverty's challenges are interrelated and that focusing on one area such as education, water, or health can alleviate poverty, but not eliminate it. For example, investing in education can achieve little if children lack access to health care, and a new clinic cannot address every health problem if people must drink dirty water. Thus, our integrated approach addresses the five critical means of raising a community out of poverty: sanitation and clean water, health services, education, income generation, and financial services. Sanitation and clean water: karimu builds community-wide, easily accessed clean water systems and modern school bathrooms so that all community members can stay healthy and work or attend school regularly. Health services: karimu builds hospitals and dispensaries, retains skilled nurses and doctors, teaches hygiene, and administers vaccination campaigns. Education: karimu rebuilds crumbling schools and provides learning materials and hygiene supplies. Income generation: karimu helps the people of agricultural communities by teaching farmers to move beyond subsistence with entrepreneurship training and opportunities to grow lucrative cash crops. Financial services: karimu helps community-led savings groups build financial security so that emergencies do not force families to sell vital assets such as the cow whose milk feeds the children. Fifty-nine volunteers living in 18 different countries worked with the eight paid tanzanian employees of karimu heart and spirit organization to plan, execute, and maintain karimu's projects. Karimu international help foundation's overhead costs are minimal precisely because the people who work for us neither request nor receive any monetary compensation. During 2025, in the area of sanitation and clean water, karimu provided hygiene education for the 163 teachers and approximately 4,500 students of ayalagaya ward and for arri ward's 4,393 students and 139 teachers. We modernized the bathrooms at tsaayo secondary school, whose 33 teachers serve 585 students, and we built modern bathrooms, plus a large handwashing sink, for arri primary school's 720 students and 16 teachers. In dabil ward we completed a thorough assessment of all the existing water sources to prepare for our next major construction project, which will bring clean water to within 500 meters of every household, as we have already done in neighboring ayalagaya and arri wards. We continued to monitor our water projects in ayalagaya and arri and learned to our satisfaction that the communities are maintaining those projects perfectly. In the area of health services, in 2025 the karimu-built dareda kati health center and the karimu-built gajal dispensary, both in ayalagaya ward, together gave treatment to over 100,000 people. More than 2,500 babies were born safely, including more than 360 whose births required c-sections. Over 20,000 visitors to the health center and the dispensary received family planning advice. In addition, the new dental care clinic served over 160 patients. The da

Financial Efficiency

• Mission deployment rate: 56.3%; rating input score 56
• Program expense ratio: 100%; rating input score 100
• Fundraising efficiency: Limited

Transparency & Controls

• Consistency checks: 92.9%; rating input score 93; 22nd percentile among comparable filings
• Pay-setting controls: Limited
• Foreign activity oversight: Scored; rating input score 0
• Grant itemization coverage: 100%; rating input score 100; 78th percentile among comparable filings
• Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
• Related-party transparency: Limited

Accountability

• Independent voting board: 0%; rating input score 0; 6th percentile among comparable filings
• Governance controls: 5 of 7 controls in place; rating input score 71
  • Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
  • Whistleblower policy: Pass
  • Document-retention policy: Pass
  • CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
  • 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: 43.7%; rating input score 89; 89th percentile among comparable filings
• Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.41; rating input score 54; 54th percentile among comparable filings
• Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.01; rating input score 58; 58th percentile among comparable filings
• Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 78; 78th percentile among comparable filings

Growth

• Program expense growth: 13.8% per year; rating input score 100; 68th percentile among comparable filings
• Revenue growth: 18.1% per year; rating input score 100; 80th percentile among comparable filings
• Asset growth: 20.3% per year; rating input score 100; 79th percentile among comparable filings