California · Nonprofit
Wayfinder Family Services
Wayfinder Family Services (California) receives grants from 163 organizations whose IRS filings report $13,912,786 to it, the largest being SELMA E ANDREWS TRUST ($4,715,084). 115 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- Revenue FY2025
- $47M
- Funders on record
- 163
- Grants received
- $14M
- Net assets
- $56M
What Wayfinder Family Services does
Mission
The mission of Wayfinder Family Services is to ensure that children, youth and adults facing challenges always have a place to turn. Founded in 1953 as the Foundation for the Junior Blind, the organization initially enabled visually impaired children to lead fuller and more independent lives. In response to community needs, Wayfinder expanded programs for children, youth and adults with vision loss or profound special needs and serious medical conditions; children and infants who have experienced loss and trauma; foster youth in search of homes and opportunity; and adoptive families. We offer all services at no cost to our clients, most of whom are low-income people of color.
As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.
Programs
Our statewide Foster Care and Adoption programs match children and youth who have been displaced from their homes due to abuse or neglect with families that can provide safe, caring homes. Wayfinder recruits, trains and certifies resource (foster) families, some of whom ultimately adopt the children they foster. We emphasize a child achieving permanency, which can be reunification with birth parents, living with relatives, adoption or guardianship. Also, Wayfinder offers therapeutic post-adoption support that includes case management, mental health therapy and mentoring to children and their adoptive families during and after adoption to promote stability and permanency.
$15,054,557 spentof which $1,918,533 as grants37% of program spendingThe Cottage is a 10-day temporary shelter care program on our Los Angeles campus for boys and girls ages 0 through 17 who have been removed from their homes due to abuse or neglect. These children need temporary refuge until they can be placed with family members or foster families. Our professional staff stabilize children in crisis so they are ready to transition to a placement. Wayfinder is one of only four agencies selected by the Los Angeles County Department of Children and Family Services to provide this service-and the only shelter licensed to care for infants and toddlers. Thus, The Cottage receives all children under age 5 in the county who are removed from their homes due to maltreatment and cannot be immediately placed with a friend or family member.
$5,844,207 spent14% of program spendingMental Health offers therapy to children, youth, adults and families in our programs, including traumatized youth in The Cottage and The Haven. Wayfinder remains one of only a handful of organizations in the state that offers mental health services to people with disabilities. Our counselors help clients build skills to cope with vision loss, traumatic experiences, unstable environments, abuse, neglect and more. Wayfinder's community mental health services assist residents in need in Los Angeles, Butte and Placer counties. Our mental health care in the community is focused on preventative services to build resilient individuals and families.
$6,580,641 spent16% of program spendingFamilies referred to Family Preservation are at risk of having children removed from their home. Through intensive counseling and other services, parents recognize their triggers and learn how to prevent the behaviors that destabilize their family. As a result of Family Preservation, children avoid out-of-home placement or reentry to foster care and can thrive in their nurturing families. This program launched in July 2024 and reflects Wayfinder's commitment to expanding preventive services that can avert the need for crisis intervention.Our Kinship Support Services Program is a kinship navigation service for grandparents, extended family members or close family friends who step up to raise children so they avoid the trauma of separation from their birth family. The program also assists kinship families that form voluntarily, without the assistance of a child welfare agency. Our program offers counseling, assistance with basic needs, support groups and workshops, respite resources and more. Kinship families are more stable, and children maintain their family connections, which produces better long-term outcomes. Our Family Finding services search exhaustively for relatives or…
$13,268,112 spent33% of program spending
The 4 programs described on its FY2024 Form 990, listed largest first by expense. Program spending in total: $40,747,517.
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 $58M to $66M (+14%).
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 68% · 2019 70% · 2020 77% · 2021 92% · 2022 87% · 2023 87% · 2024 85% · 2025 83%. Grants only. Government contracts and fees sit inside program revenue.
95% of Wayfinder Family Services’s revenue is contributions — more reliant on donations than three-quarters of its peers (21% for the typical peer).
Surplus & reserves
Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 5 of the last 8 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
Jay Allen
CEO
Board chair
Glenn A Sonnenberg
Chair of Board
As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.
Who funds it, year by year
2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 51 funders to 71 funders, grant income rose $483k → $2.3M.
21 of 163 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 12% 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 Wayfinder Family Services’s funders (the co-funder graph). Top 30 of 163 funders by total. 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
Wayfinder Family Services has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 34% of grant income, and it takes 6 funders to reach half.
the vertical line marks half of all grant income — 6 funders to its left
Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 10% · 2018 18% · 2019 20% · 2020 11% · 2021 42% · 2022 45% · 2023 48% — growing more concentrated.
“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
46% of Wayfinder Family Services's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 71% 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
51% of Wayfinder Family Services's grant income comes from California funders.
In-state vs out-of-state, by year
Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $1.7M arriving through sponsors registered in 12 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
Wayfinder Family Services has grown faster than half of the 2,396 human services nonprofits its size.
this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 2,396 human services nonprofits $10M–$100M, FY2025
Government funding Wayfinder Family Services receives
Grants and contracts to this organization from federal (USASpending) and state checkbooks, reconciled to its EIN. $18.5M on record — $18.5M federal, $25 state.
- Department of Health and Human Services$18.5M
- REFUNDS - GENERAL $25
Federal grants vs contracts are distinguished; state line items keep their reported category. Matched by name + geography (the BMF), so coverage is partial and precision-first.
Organizations like Wayfinder Family 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 California
Nationally
Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.
Where the money goes
84% of spending goes to programs.
Governance
Public support
96%
Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.
Footprint & structure
Files a return copy in 23 states
Screen this organization
A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Wayfinder Family 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 Wayfinder Family Services?
- Wayfinder Family Services (California) receives grants from 163 organizations whose IRS filings report $13,912,786 to it, the largest being SELMA E ANDREWS TRUST ($4,715,084). 115 of them have funded it in more than one year.
- How many funders does Wayfinder Family Services have?
- IRS filings report 163 organizations giving $13,912,786 in grants to Wayfinder Family Services, 115 of which have funded it in more than one year.
- Who is the largest funder of Wayfinder Family Services?
- SELMA E ANDREWS TRUST is the largest funder on record, with $4,715,084 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
- How can an organization like Wayfinder Family Services find more funders?
- Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in California. 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 Wayfinder Family 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 163 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 22, 2026. What this page cannot tell you · view filing