Pennsylvania · Nonprofit
Northern Children's Services
Northern Children's Services (Pennsylvania) receives grants from 28 organizations whose IRS filings report $2,115,836 to it, the largest being JACOB E HEYL ($500,840). 14 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $20M
- Funders on record
- 28
- Grants received
- $2.1M
- Net assets
- $13M
What Northern Children's Services does
Mission
Northern's mission is to support the healthy development of children and youth, while stabilizing their families to build stronger communities. Everything we do is designed to create a better future for our families. We believe that every child and youth has the potential to transform themselves - no matter their background or life situations. If we invest in that potential through services that focus on care, safety, health, permanency, independence, and positive relationships, then children, youth, and their families will lead happier and healthier lives.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Intensive Behavioral Health Services - IBHS provides school, community, and home-based behavioral health services to support children with emotional or behavioral issues that make it difficult for them to function in a standard school setting. Through individual counseling, group therapy, classroom support, and behavior modification techniques, such as role modeling, redirection, coaching, and conflict resolution, our caring IBHS staff help children recognize when they are escalating, control themselves, and move to less intensive levels of care. Northern currently provides IBHS at over 16 schools in the School District of Philadelphia, including charter schools.
$8,307,741 spent$12,377,198 earned by the program59% of program spendingChild/Youth Welfare, Safety and Prevention - Northern's Child Welfare division complements its Behavioral Health division, providing an array of prevention and intervention services to children, youth and families, both off and on our campus - particularly those who have been or are at risk of abuse or neglect. Our programs and policies focus on the protection, care, and healthy development of children and youth. (1) Foster Care - Our Foster Care parents give children and youth (ages 0-21) with varying levels of emotional and behavioral needs the care, love, and nurturing family environment they need. Change the life of a child. Make a difference in your community. Foster Care involves the placement of children and youth in a single or two-parent family. We offer strong support to foster parents and work collaboratively with them to meet the child or youth's needs and provide a safe pathway to permanency. (2) Adoptions - Northern Children facilitates adoptions between loving families and children from infancy to 21-years-old. The children are each in need of safe, supportive and stable environments. (3) Juvenile Justice Supportive Services Program (formerly Reti-Wrap) - This…
$2,377,377 spentof which $1,518,692 as grants$536,850 earned by the program17% of program spendingBehavioral Health - The goal of our behavioral health programs is to help children, youth and families achieve and maintain appropriate and positive functioning, which will transfer to community, home, and school environments. Children, youth, and families gain necessary skills through a wide range of therapeutic, structured activities that are provided in a stable, consistent, and interconnected service setting. (1) Early Intervention(EI) - Northern's EI Program is intended to meet the needs of middle and high-school aged youth who are at-risk for drug and alcohol use and abuse. Curriculum-based group psycho-ed and counseling sessions are provided. The program operates in schools, after-school programs, and residential and community-based settings. (2) Outpatient - We serve children and youth up to age 21 with emotional and behavioral symptoms including, but not limited to, depression, impulsivity, hyperactivity, trauma, anxiety, and disruptive behaviors. A multidisciplinary team of child and adolescent psychiatrists and therapists provide individualized emotional, behavioral, and psychiatric support in a safe, caring, and healthy environment using multiple, effective. This…
$2,142,119 spent15% of program spendingAdoption
$686,095 spent5% of program spendingother social services
$609,186 spent4% of program spending
The 5 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $14,122,518.
The organization over time
Each line starts at 100 in 2017, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2017, 50 means half. The number beside each label in the key is where it ended. The shaded band is where the middle 50% of its peers' revenue would sit, given their growth.
Balance sheet
Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2020 to 2021, from $21M to $14M (−35%).
How it's funded, over time
Each bar is one year's revenue split into where it came from, and every bar is the same height — these are shares, not amounts, so a year that raised twice as much looks the same size. Hover a bar for the split.
Government-grant reliance: 2017 31% · 2018 43% · 2019 47% · 2020 40% · 2021 49% · 2022 35% · 2023 47% · 2024 41% · 2025 28%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
34% of Northern Children's Services’s revenue is contributions — more donation-reliant than the typical peer (21% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 4 of the last 9 reported years ran a deficit.
reserve
Leadership and staff
The officers, directors, trustees and key employees listed on each return. Joined and no longer listed compare each filing with the year before, matching people by surname and first initial; a year after a gap, or a roster under three people, has no comparison.
Chief executive
Renata Cobbs-Fletcher
President & CEO
Board chair
Marco Vietti
Chairperson
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 4 funders to 16 funders, grant income fell $287k → $213k.
3 of 28 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 8% of grant dollars received. That money is really individual donors directing a sponsor; the institutions to cultivate are the non-DAF funders.
From the IRS filings of Northern Children's Services’s funders (the co-funder graph). Association, not causation. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How concentrated its funding is
Northern Children's Services has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 24% of grant income, and it takes 3 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 3 funders to its left
37% of the income these shares are computed over arrives through pass-through sponsors or from payers whose filings do not say what kind of payment it is. Concentration is still measured over all of it, because the money is real; what it does not support is a claim about how many institutions have chosen to fund Northern Children's Services.
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 77% · 2018 80% · 2019 46% · 2020 23% · 2021 29% · 2022 41% · 2023 27% — diversifying over time.
“Effective funders” = inverse Herfindahl index (1 / Σ shareᵢ²) — the number of equal-sized funders that would give the same concentration. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
How long its funders stay
71% of Northern Children's Services's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 50% give in more than one year at all.
Share of funders still giving k years after their first recorded grant, pooled across every acquisition cohort. A funder counts as retained in a year only if it made a grant that year. Measured to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving — a funder cannot be counted as lapsed in a year most filers have not reached.
Where its funders are
76% of Northern Children's Services's grant income comes from Pennsylvania funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $169k arriving through sponsors registered in 3 states is excluded from the map and the split above: a sponsor holds money on a donor’s behalf, so its registered address would place those dollars somewhere no donor need ever have been. Trends are read to FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving. FY2024–FY2026 are still being filed and are shown unshaded; they do not move any figure on this page.
Against its field
Northern Children's Services runs a healthier operating margin than three-quarters of the 2,297 human services nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 2,297 human services nonprofits $10M–$100M, FY2025
Organizations like Northern Children's Services
Organizations whose mission and program text most resemble this one, by semantic similarity over every organization in the US filings — the closest peers, and often the clearest route to shared or prospective funders.
In Pennsylvania
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
86% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
97%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 1 state
Part of a family of 1 related entity
- Northern Children's Endowment Fund · exempt
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Northern Children's Services: IRS status (Business Master File, Publication 78, auto-revocation), the OFAC sanctions lists, the Internal Revenue Bulletin, and California registration, with the Rev. Proc. 2018-32 §8.01 reliance elements stated element by element. Generated from the current files at the moment you download it.
Screens are triage, not determinations; a source that cannot be read reports not screened, never clear. Screen this nonprofit · How the screen works · on the API as GET /api/screening/{ein}?format=pdf
Questions and answers
- Who funds Northern Children's Services?
- Northern Children's Services (Pennsylvania) receives grants from 28 organizations whose IRS filings report $2,115,836 to it, the largest being JACOB E HEYL ($500,840). 14 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Northern Children's Services have?
- IRS filings report 28 organizations giving $2,115,836 in grants to Northern Children's Services, 14 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Northern Children's Services?
- JACOB E HEYL is the largest funder on record, with $500,840 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Northern Children's Services find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Pennsylvania. The funding by cause and by state pages list the largest funders for a given area and how to approach them.
Play a game about who funds Northern Children's Services →
These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2017–2025), and the filings of 28 funders that report grants to it. “On record” means captured in the filings we have parsed — a funder that does not e-file, or whose grant detail is not itemized, will not appear. Filings run roughly 12–24 months behind. Trends on this page end at FY2023, the last fiscal year that has finished arriving; later years are shown and marked, and move no figure. Data on this page was exported October 14, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing