Developer Builds AI Tool to Challenge the Overhead Ratio Myth in Charity Ratings

A developer built GlassPocket, an AI-powered tool that challenges the widely used overhead ratio as a measure of charity effectiveness, arguing it punishes the very investments that make nonprofits work. The tool searches US 501(c)(3) organizations and pulls IRS Form 990 data via ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer API to surface alternative financial metrics. Instead of a single overhead percentage, it displays reserve months, operating margin trends, staff-investment share, fundraising cost per dollar raised, and peer-percentile comparisons against roughly 70 similar organizations. A Gemini-powered narrative generator produces a plain-English myth-buster card for each charity, while a grounded chat box lets users ask follow-up questions answered solely from that organization's own filing data. The project was submitted to the DEV Community Weekend Challenge and is live at glasspocket.vercel.app.
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