PANEL 01
Financial Health
Nine years of IRS Form 990 financial data: revenue, expenses, net assets, total assets, operating margin, comp ratio, tuition dependency, endowment-to-OpEx ratio.
Source: IRS Form 990 public extract.
HOW IT WORKS
Verified inputs.
Structured output.
HiveCheck is the outside diligence lens on any independent school — the report you wish you had before a campus visit, before briefing a finalist, or before sizing up a school and its market from the outside. Every panel pulls from a public, federal source. Nothing is scraped, nothing is licensed, nothing is invented.
WHAT WE LOOK AT
Ten panels per school. Co-equal, not hero-and-sidebar.
PANEL 02
Peer Comparison
Same-size, same-region peer cohort. School value vs peer p25/p50/p75/p90 on operating margin, tuition dependency, comp ratio, and endowment-to-OpEx. Percentile reported with n_peers explicitly disclosed.
Source: derived from the same 990 universe.
PANEL 03
Community Demographics
The area around the school. Total population, 5-year growth, median household income, education attainment, K-12 cohort size, household composition. ZIP-level (ZCTA) primary, metro or county fallback.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates.
PANEL 04
Paying Capacity
Can families in the school's real draw area afford tuition. School's 990-derived net-of-aid tuition against the population-weighted median household income across its ~45-minute drive-time catchment, with a plain verdict.
Source: U.S. Census ACS 5-year + school's IRS Form 990.
PANEL 05
Fundraising Profile
What the school itself reports raising, from its own 990 (contributions and grants, averaged), plus a state scholarship tax-credit lever where the state offers one, plus the local giving climate.
Source: IRS Form 990 + IRS Statistics of Income.
PANEL 06
Competitive Landscape
Saturation and concentration in the catchment: independent-school density by grade band, public and charter alternatives, and state-level ESA / voucher status.
Source: NCES PSS + NCES CCD + state ESA registry.
PANEL 07
Enrollment Demand
990 tuition-revenue trend as the enrollment spine, with a county-level births feed showing the incoming K cohort pipeline.
Source: IRS Form 990 + U.S. Census county births.
PANEL 08
Local Economy
The state labor market: the unemployment rate and the year-over-year employment trend.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
PANEL 09
Leadership Compensation & Governance
Schedule J head-of-school compensation (individual names withheld by policy), Schedule L related-party transactions, and Schedule O governance disclosures.
Source: IRS Form 990 Schedules J / L / O.
PANEL 10
Questions to Ask
Five interview-ready questions generated from anomalies in that school's own filings — each anchored to a specific number so a candidate can defend asking it.
Source: generated from the school's IRS Form 990 series.
WHERE THE DATA COMES FROM
Public, federal, traceable.
Independent schools that operate as 501(c)(3) nonprofits file IRS Form 990 annually. The IRS publishes the full text on its public extract repository. We download, parse, and normalize those filings into a structured database. Schedule J gives us head-of-school and top-5 compensated executive comp. Schedule D gives us endowment history.
The U.S. Census Bureau publishes the American Community Survey (ACS) 5-year estimates down to the ZIP-code area (ZCTA). We read each school’s local ZCTA where available, falling back to the metro (CBSA) or county for areas the ZIP-level estimates don’t cover.
The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics is the source for the labor-market panel. We surface the state-level unemployment rate and the year-over-year employment trend for each school’s state.
No marketing material is ingested. No school websites are scraped. No third-party data is licensed. If a school’s viewbook says one thing and the Form 990 says another, we surface the 990.
THE COMMUNITY & MARKET READS
Two questions about a school’s market, read separately.
On every school page, the Community & Market section carries two HiveCheck reads: Paying Capacity (can families in the school’s draw area afford tuition) and the Fundraising Profile (what the school actually raises, and the giving climate around it). They answer different questions owned by different offices. Both are computed over the school’s ~45-minute drive-time catchment — the real area a school draws from — not a single ZIP code.
These are HiveCheck reads built from public data, not federal statistics. They describe the market around a school, not the specific families it enrolls: a boarding school or a magnet day school draws well beyond its catchment, and the read should be weighted accordingly.
PAYING CAPACITY
Can families here afford tuition
Paying Capacity answers one question: at this school’s tuition, how deep is the paying pool in its real draw area? It compares the school’s tuition to the typical family income across its ~45-minute drive-time catchment and returns a plain verdict, not an abstract score.
THE VERDICT
Tuition, net of financial aid, as a share of the typical catchment family income:
- Comfortable — tuition is 15% or less of the typical income. The median family can absorb it without aid.
- A stretch — tuition is 15% to 30% of income. The median family would feel the price; the realistic paying pool is the higher-income segment plus targeted aid.
- Aid territory — tuition exceeds 30% of income. The median family needs aid; the sustainable paying pool is the $200K+ segment plus the aid budget.
INPUTS
Tuition is the school’s IRS Form 990 net revenue per student (program-service revenue divided by enrollment) — an estimate of the net-of-aid price, not the sticker price. Typical income is the population-weighted median household income across the ZIP areas within roughly a 45-minute drive of the school (U.S. Census ACS 5-year). A supporting stat shows the share of households earning $200K+ — the base that can cover tuition without aid.
CAVEATS
A draw-area read, not a household-level guarantee: real paying families come from the higher-income tail of the distribution, and the median is the anchor, not the enrolled family. The tuition figure is a 990-derived estimate that trails a recent tuition change. When a drive-time catchment isn’t available, the read falls back to the school’s home ZIP and is labeled as such.
SOURCES
U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates, and the school’s own IRS Form 990 (net revenue per student). Census small cells are suppressed at source and never imputed to zero.
FUNDRAISING PROFILE
What the school raises, and the giving climate around it
Independent-school fundraising is relationship-based — parents, grandparents, and alumni, then grants — and those donors often don’t live nearby. So this panel leads with what the school itself reports raising, and treats the surrounding area’s wealth as context, never as a donor base or a forecast. It reads in three layers:
- What the school raises, from its own IRS Form 990 (contributions and grants, Part VIII), averaged over recent years to smooth one-time gifts and campaigns, shown as an annual figure and as a share of revenue. This is the credible, reported fundraising signal, so it leads.
- A state scholarship tax-credit lever, where the school’s state runs one: a donor receives a state tax credit for gifts that fund tuition scholarships — a real, structural channel the local market enables. Nothing renders for states without a program.
- The local giving climate (context): the concentration of major-gift capacity across the school’s ~45-minute catchment, surfaced as high-capacity ZIP “pockets” and a dollar pool.
HOW THE LOCAL CLIMATE IS READ
We sum the charitable giving reported by households earning $200,000 or more in each ZIP area within the catchment — a pool (a sum, never an average), so a single wealthy enclave shows up rather than washing out against the metro. ZIP areas are tiered high / mid / lower by absolute giving and cross-checked against Census income, so a suppressed-but-wealthy ZIP surfaces as a “possible pocket.” We read the $200K+ bracket and drop itemizer rate entirely: after the 2018 standard-deduction change, itemizing signals a tax-filing choice, not generosity, and only the $200K+ bracket still itemizes enough for the IRS charitable data to be honest.
HOW TO READ IT
The local pool is the area’s giving, not the school’s donor base and not a fundraising forecast — even a locally-anchored program captures only about 1–3% of a pool like this. “No high-capacity communities” is a real finding about how local wealth is distributed, not missing data. A loyal alum or grandparent in another state won’t appear here, which is exactly where the development office’s own records matter more than any map.
SOURCES
Source: IRS Statistics of Income. The school’s own IRS Form 990 (contributions and grants) and U.S. Census ACS 5-year estimates (income cross-check). IRS Statistics of Income data is released on roughly a three-year lag; suppressed small cells are never imputed to zero.
HOW FRESH IS THE DATA
One to two years behind the calendar. By design.
The IRS publishes 990 data on a roughly 9-to-18-month lag from the school’s fiscal year end. For most schools we have filings through FY2024, with newer years rolling in as the IRS releases them. Every panel surfaces the through-year prominently.
ACS 5-year estimates refresh in September each year. BLS QCEW data lags by about six months; CES is current within the month. The data-freshness footer on every report shows the latest period we have on file for each series.
CURRENT DATA STATE: COVERAGE THROUGH FY2024 · 1,620 SCHOOLS · 9,822 FILINGS · LAST REFRESHED 2026-05-13
ALL SOURCES
Every source, with its required attribution.
- IRS Statistics of Income, ZIP Code Data. Source: IRS Statistics of Income.
- IRS Statistics of Income, County Migration Data. Source: IRS Statistics of Income.
- Urban Institute Education Data Portal, NCES CCD Directory. NCES Common Core of Data (CCD), via Education Data Portal, Urban Institute, under ODC Attribution License.
- Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index (three-digit ZIP). Source: Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index.
- OpenStreetMap (via openrouteservice drive-time isochrones). Drive-time areas: map data © OpenStreetMap contributors (ODbL), routing via openrouteservice.org.
- U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (county births). Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Population Estimates Program (Vintage 2019 and 2024).
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates.
- HiveCheck derived metrics. HiveCheck proprietary metric derived from IRS Statistics of Income, U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, and Federal Housing Finance Agency data.
- IRS Form 990 public extract. Source: Internal Revenue Service, Form 990 filings (public domain).
- U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey. Source: U.S. Census Bureau, ACS 5-year estimates.
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, QCEW and CES.
- U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Source: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, personal income by area.
- U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Source: HUD Fair Market Rents.
- NCES Private School Universe Survey. Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Private School Universe Survey.
WHO BUILDS THIS
Lomuscio Labs.
Lomuscio Labs is a small AI strategy + product practice based in Asheville, NC, built by a team with independent-school leadership and data expertise. The independent-school dataset that powers HiveCheck was built over the past two years for internal use; we opened it up because the candidates, Heads, trustees, and search-firm partners we’ve shown it to wanted access.
HiveCheck is a side build, not a venture-funded company. There’s no growth team chasing month-over-month adds. Buy a year if it’s useful. We’ll be honest with you when the data is thin.