Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation

What Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation does

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.

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2019 to 2020, from $279k to $295k (+6%).

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.

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 3 of the last 8 reported years ran a deficit.

Leadership and staff

Who funds it, year by year

2018 → 2023: the base broadened from 1 funder to 2 funders, grant income fell $22k → $22k.

2 of 4 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 92% 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 Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation’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

Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation leans on a few funders — its largest provides 86% of grant income and the top three 99%; half comes from just 1 funder.

99% 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 Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation.

Largest funder’s share by year: 2018 100% · 2019 100% · 2020 98% · 2021 92% · 2022 100% · 2023 72% — 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.

Where its funders are

92% of Volunteer Lawyers for the Poor Foundation's grant income arrives through donor-advised or pass-through sponsors, whose addresses record where the money is held rather than where the donor is. Of the $8k that is directly attributable, 83% of it comes from Ohio funders.

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $94k arriving through sponsors registered in 2 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.