The Ayla Foundation
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 922233570
- IRS 990 coverage
- 2024–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990 2025, Form 990-N 2023
- Location
- Westerville, OH, USA
- Phone
- 4403768932
- Rating
- 82
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
- Sector
- Fund Raising and Fund Distribution
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $227,852
- Expenses
- $180,448
- Assets
- $255,334
- Liabilities
- $0
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
9 people listed
Highest reported compensation
- ERIN SLIVKA (CHAIRWOMAN): $8,369 total reported compensation
Source: IRS Form 990. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Our mission is to raise awareness and fund cutting-edge clinical research for pediatric brain cancer; focusing on cancer's biggest bully, dipg.
What it reported doing in 2025
Our mission is to raise awareness and funding for cutting-edge clinical research for pediatric brain cancer, focusing on dipg/dmg. We have three strategic pillars to help fulfill this mission: advocacy/awareness, family support, and clinical research. 1. Advocacy/awareness: we are currently building out our advocacy program, but we continuously raise awareness through social media and digital marketing platforms that allow us to reach our audience to provide education and information about pediatric brain cancer and childhood cancer in general. 2. Family support: we offer an online application via our website for parents to fill out if they have a child with dipg/dmg and have to travel to receive treatment (either radiation or a clinical trial). We help bridge the financial gap for parents by offering them financial assistance for travel/rent/food associated with treatment. 3. Research: we are a visionary member of the dipg/dmg collaborative. This is a group of 25 foundations who jointly pull our allocated research dollars together in order to fund more, better and bigger research grants. This also helps reduce redundancy of researchers being funded by multiple organizations for the same grant. Here is the website: https://dipgcollaborative.org
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Donor-supported. 97% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.
- Distribution model
- Grant intermediary. The nonprofit sent 80% of its reported program spending out as grants.
The verdict
STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered and total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 75
- Transparency & Controls: 94
- Accountability: 79
- Sustainability: 61
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 77.3%; rating input score 77
- Program expense ratio: 96.8%; rating input score 97
- Fundraising efficiency: Limited
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: 100%; rating input score 100; 81st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
- Related-party transparency: Limited
Accountability
- Independent voting board: 100%; rating input score 100; 64th percentile among comparable filings
- Governance controls: 4 of 8 controls in place; rating input score 50
- Conflict-of-interest policy: Pass
- Whistleblower policy: Fail
- Document-retention policy: Pass
- CEO compensation review process: NotApplicable
- Other executive compensation review process: Fail
- Form 990 shared with the board: Pass
- Board meeting minutes documented: Pass
- Audit committee oversight: Missing
- Independent financial-statement audit: Fail
Sustainability
- Operating margin: 20.8%; rating input score 72; 72nd percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.42; rating input score 50; 50th percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0; rating input score 77; 77th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 4.6%; rating input score 31; 31st percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 172% per year; rating input score 100; 99th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 6.6% per year; rating input score 100; 56th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 20.5% per year; rating input score 100; 83rd percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 77.3% of revenue deployed · 96.8% of spending went to programs
- Governance: 9 of 9 board members independent · 4 of 8 filing controls reported
- Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $175K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $8K · 9 people listed
- Consistency: 21 of 21 current checks pass
- Schedules: 5 filed schedules · includes major donors and grants
- Filing history: 2 filing years from 2024 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: 2 filed money-flow records
- Related organizations: 1 filed related-organization link
- 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.
- Review — Accountability: Governance controls: 3 of 7 not reported.
- Review — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 50/100.
- Moderate — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 31/100.