Summary
What do they do? Ear of the Lion, EIN 77-0003862, supplies reconditioned hearing-aid loans across California and Nevada. Its intake excludes people eligible for government-assisted programs. Applicants obtain an audiogram and medical clearance or waiver at their own expense, pay a nonrefundable $150 per aid after approval, and use a local Lions sponsor and audiologist/dispenser. The foundation says it pays a fitting fee; the amount and other clinical resource contributions are unverified. More
Why this approach interests us
- Reconditioned aids, local fitting and a small organization can help low-income people who lack another practical route to improved hearing.
Our main reservations
- The $150 charge is a patient fee per device, not a donor price. One person can receive two aids. Current annual volume, Bay residence, continued use, alternatives and funding capacity remain unknown.
What do you get for your dollar?
Our signed prior-weighted model gives $1.31 million per 10 Bay QALYs for a whole-organization gift; the central world is $4.31 million. Full historical expense is retained, but only hearing-aid health is quantified. Annual unique course volume and Bay share are assumptions, not measured outcomes. The 10% favorable world supplies 94.17% of signed expected benefit. Inspect the model, assumptions and scenarios.
- bay whole gift
- $1.31M — per 10 modeled Bay QALYs; partial health scope
- central world
- $4.31M — per 10 Bay QALYs
- all-beneficiary model
- $494K — not the Bay ranking; includes non-Bay modeled health
- favorable tail
- 94.17% — of signed expectation from a 10% subjective world
- funding room
- Unknown — $10,000 model cap is not an available tranche
1. What do they do?
Ear of the Lion, EIN 77-0003862, supplies reconditioned hearing-aid loans across California and Nevada. Its intake excludes people eligible for government-assisted programs. Applicants obtain an audiogram and medical clearance or waiver at their own expense, pay a nonrefundable $150 per aid after approval, and use a local Lions sponsor and audiologist/dispenser. The foundation says it pays a fitting fee; the amount and other clinical resource contributions are unverified.
Fund the complete organization
Retain all $101,368 calendar-2024 expenses, not merely program expenses or device grants. Patient fees remain revenue, not a subtraction from whole donor cost.
Translate activity into person-course offers
Use explicitly uncertain 60/100/150 annual supported person-course equivalents, not an observed patient count. Two aids, repeated loans and repairs must not become extra people.
Complete fitting and sustain incremental benefit
Apply completion, local clinical transfer and finite effective years beyond realistic alternative access. Non-use and later alternative care are already inside effective years.
Attribute both benefits and harms to residents
California/Nevada service includes Bay partners but no measured Bay residence distribution. Bay shares of 10/20/40% are analyst scenarios, not provider-location statistics.
Scope of this review. The donor-cost perspective includes all historical organizational expense and unquantified education/medical-support work. It is not a complete valuation of every organizational benefit. Partner testing, clinical work and donated-device opportunity costs are not assumed free; a complete-resource price remains unknown. Local clubs and clinicians share the same patient outcome, which must not be counted twice.
2. Monitoring and information sharing
Whole legal recipient
Filed calendar-2024 Form 990. $101,368 expense and $22,524 patient-loan revenue; no annual person-course count reported in Part III or Schedule O.
Our assessment. Retain all expense. Fee-equivalent devices cannot establish unique people or marginal throughput.
Eligible low-income California/Nevada applicants
Official intake and professional-partner pages. Reconditioned aids with local fitting, a patient fee and a paid fitting-fee pathway.
Our assessment. Real clinical delivery; Bay fraction, continued use and additional capacity remain unmeasured. Fees and outside tests can limit access.
Older first-time hearing-aid users with at least moderate loss
Community-centre randomized delayed-start study; three-month utility measurement and separate one-year use follow-up. Reported HUI3 utility gain of 0.12 at three months. At one year, 71.4% of respondents reported continued device use, with a 66% response rate; this is not demonstrated persistence of utility. Five-year utility benefit was projected.
Our assessment. The not-fitted control group received modified HUI3 questions excluding hearing-aid use; measurement comparability and instrument choice limit transfer of the 0.12 estimate. Different setting and device/support package. The anchor is utility, not annual QALYs; 0.5 effective years is an analyst judgment, not source-derived duration or local retention.
3. Qualitative assessment
Reconditioned aids, local fitting and a small organization can help low-income people who lack another practical route to improved hearing.
Key reservations
- Throughput and geography are not measured: the result is an explicit exploratory hypothesis, not a robust empirical return.
- Some observed loan activity may involve repeat devices or two ears; course assumptions avoid automatic device-to-person equivalence but remain uncertain.
- The 10% favorable world drives 94.17% of signed benefit. A numerical rank would overstate confidence if separated from this caveat.
- Government-ineligibility screening does not prove that no insurance, OTC device, other charity or family-funded alternative exists.
- Local clubs, audiologists and other hearing charities may serve the same person; no additive partner credit is allowed.
- Current donated-device stock, paid fitting fee, clinical follow-up and external resource costs are unknown.
- No new Bay-restricted sponsorship offer was requested or verified.
Benefits not included in our estimate
- Unquantified medical/surgical and education work
- Mortality and cognitive-decline prevention
- Productivity, caregiver and social-value benefits
- Automatic bilateral or repeat-device extra health
- Lifetime hearing benefit
4. What do you get for your dollar?
$1,311,104 per 10 modeled Bay QALYs
A hypothetical $10,000 gift is scaled against full historical expense. Annual course-equivalent assumptions are reduced by funding additionality; clinical utility, local transfer, fitting completion and finite effective years determine benefit. Signed harm is deducted before geographic attribution. None of the local clinical, funding, volume or Bay-share coefficients is an empirical estimate.
A better life is our comparison unit of 10 additional quality-adjusted life years (QALYs), potentially spread across people. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.
How we calculate the estimate
SIGNED EXPECTATION BEFORE DIVISION: 10 × $10,000 / 0.07627160445110882 Bay QALYs
$1,311,104 per 10 Bay QALYs
Model inputs and assumptions
- Whole annual cost
- $101,368 (range: Calendar 2024). Original Form 990: $66,218 program, $35,150 other functional cost. No fee or overhead subtraction. Current budget unknown. High historical.
- Annual person-course offers
- 100 (range: 60–150 declared worlds). Judgment. $22,524 historical patient-loan fees / today's $150 equals 150.16 fee-equivalent aids, not measured volume. Fiscal fees, one/two aids, waivers, replacements and timing unresolved; this is a clue, not a bound. Very low.
- Funding additionality
- 50% (range: 0–75%). Extra care rather than substitution for reserves, other donations or clinical financing. No verified funding offer. Very low.
- External utility and transfer
- 0.12 × 50% (range: Transfer 0–75%). Short-term HUI3 utility from older first-time aid users, not local QALYs. Same central benchmark as existing hearing-access research, not an outcome-driven choice. External controlled anchor; uncertain local transfer.
- Completed fitting
- 80% (range: 60–90%). Courses are offers/approved support equivalents, not known fitted successes. This gate covers pre-fitting failure, not later non-use. Very low.
- Effective incremental years
- 0.5 (range: 0.25–2). Finite present-value exposure assumption already incorporating onset, continued use, replacement, mortality and alternative-care catch-up; no second duration/retention multiplier. No lifelong credit. Very low.
- Extra burden per additional course
- 0.0005 QALY (range: 0–0.003 in declared worlds). Poor fit, distress or delayed appropriate evaluation. Not an observed adverse-event rate or maximum possible harm. Signed analyst prior.
- Bay-resident share
- 20% (range: 10–40%). Broad California/Nevada coverage with Bay club participation. No measured residence denominator; share applies to both signs. Very low.
- Subjective joint worlds
- 40% null / 10% harm (range: 20% cautious / 20% central / 10% favorable). Locked before first execution; favorable assumptions intentionally stress the mechanism, not a confidence interval. Uncalibrated judgment.
$10,000 whole gift — accounting diagnostic, not a promised package
- Funding null (20%): 0 Bay QALY. No additional care; no finite positive price.
- Clinical null (20%): 0 Bay QALY. Added support but no modeled clinical gain or harm.
- Harm (10%): −0.002960 Bay QALY. Retained in expectation; not a negative bargain price.
- Cautious (20%): $193.08M per 10. 0.000517915 Bay QALY.
- Central (20%): $4.31M per 10. 0.0231828585 Bay QALY; 9.865 course equivalents, 4.933 additional nationally.
- Favorable (10%): $139,223 per 10. 0.7182740115 Bay QALY; simultaneously greater volume, Bay share, funding and finite benefit.
- Without favorable world: $20.25M per 10. Remaining 90% renormalized; base coefficients unchanged.
- Half Bay share or half courses: $2.62M per 10. Either change halves weighted Bay benefit.
- Double courses: $655,552 per 10. Unverified 120–300 annual-course sensitivity; not a new estimate.
- All funding translates into care: $876,128 per 10. Every world's funding set to 100%; not evidence current funds are the bottleneck.
- Half utility and half effective years: $5.35M per 10. Harms unchanged; explicit clinical-transfer stress.
Uncertainty. Weighted Bay health is 0.07627160445110882; all-beneficiary health is 0.20230743429879253 per $10,000. The all-beneficiary $494,297 price is not interchangeable with the Bay price. Ten percent of declared subjective probability lies below $1M/10 Bay QALYs and none below $100K; neither is a calibrated probability or exclusion of unmodeled outcomes. Favorable-tail dependence is 94.17%. Scenario set is not exhaustive. No mortality, dementia or productivity benefit credited.
5. Funding and previous grants
HOLD a giving recommendation. Obtain unique Bay patient-course and current funding/capacity evidence before treating any modeled return as purchasable.
Calendar-2024 revenue $61,502, net assets $592,022, including $449,785 restricted and $142,237 unrestricted; cash $24,609. A $39,866 deficit does not establish a present gap, and net assets are not all available cash. Current fund restrictions, staffing/fitting capacity, committed gifts and waiting patients are unknown. The $150 patient fee is not a donor quote. Model scales only within a $0–$10,000 diagnostic domain; it establishes no amount that can currently be absorbed.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
We have not verified a suitable donation route for this reviewed activity. Confirm the legal recipient and intended allocation before donating.
6. Sources
- Ear of the Lion calendar-2024 Form 990. IRS via ProPublica. Primary financial filing. Published: Filed November 13, 2025; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Ear of the Lion Schedule O. IRS via ProPublica. Primary filing supplement. Published: Filed November 13, 2025; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Current eligibility, fees and donation identity. Ear of the Lion. Primary service description. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Hearing Professionals. Ear of the Lion. Primary fitting pathway. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Club projects. Redwood Shores Lions Club. Primary Bay partner. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Other Programs and Projects. DeAnza Lions Club. Primary Bay partner. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Cost-utility analysis of hearing aid device for older adults in the community: a delayed start study. Kaur et al., BMC Health Services Research. Primary controlled study. Published: December 1, 2020; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
Annual expenses: years and sources
Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $97,028. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.
Ear Of The Lion Foundation Of California-nevada Inc
Form 990/990-EZ reported whole-entity expenses; includes program, administration and fundraising costs, but excludes any costs netted against revenue.
Latest original return and prior-year comparative combined with earlier filing data.