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Colorado · Nonprofit

Wild Blue Cats

Wild Blue Cats (Colorado) receives grants from 18 organizations whose IRS filings report $474,362 to it, the largest being CARROLL PETRIE FOUNDATION ($100,000). 12 of them have funded it in more than one year.

Revenue FY2025
$519k
Funders on record
18
Grants received
$474k
Net assets
$535k
12/18 repeat funderspeak grant-dependency 19%
01What it does

What Wild Blue Cats does

Mission

Wild Blue Cats seeks to save the precious lives of cats and kittens who are neglected, abandoned, abused, displaced, or surrendered and find them forever homes or provide them lifetime sanctuary. We also conduct TNR ventures outside City limits, while supporting TNR efforts inside City limits to the best of our ability. Wild Blue Cats supports people in our community by providing opportunities for emotional/physical healing through animal therapies. Our Kids 'n Kats program focuses specifically on helping children develop skills and compassion through working with cats.

As stated on its FY2025 Form 990.

Program

  1. See Schedule OIn 2025 our focus again remained on cats in El Paso County, but we also regularly help cats throughout Colorado and from Texas, New Mexico and occasionally California. In 2025 there were 1,071 cats taken in who were in need of safety and care; 1011 cats were adopted to loving homes.Best Friends Animal Society has recognized Wild Blue for consistently having a save rate of over 90%. Since Wild Blue was founded, over 13,000+ cats have been positively impacted by Wild Blue, and there have been over 765 community cats in the Frontier Ferals TNR program that were fixed and vaccinated in 2025 alone. Wild Blue continues working with national organizations such as Best Friends Animal Society, Petco, and Petsmart. Wild Blue continues to work with regional agencies such as DDFL Solutions, Teller County Animal Shelter, National Mill Dog Rescue in Falcon/Peyton, Humane Society of the Pikes Peak Region, JJs Helping Paws, Happy Cats Haven, Feline Fix and St. Paws Thrift Store. To promote finding forever homes for our cats, Wild Blue holds adoptions events every Saturday which alternate between a Petco store and a Petsmart store in Colorado Springs. In 2025, Wild Blue's primary…

    $376,630 spent$106,469 earned by the program
    100% of program spending

The program described on its FY2025 Form 990. Program spending in total: $376,630.

02The organization over time

The organization over time

Each line starts at 100 in 2020, so what you read is the shape rather than the size: 150 means half as much again as 2020, 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.

100 = 20202020 Revenue 100 ($359k) Expenses 100 ($290k) Net assets 100 ($214k)2021 Revenue 104 ($374k) Expenses 120 ($348k) Net assets 112 ($239k)2022 Revenue 140 ($501k) Expenses 141 ($409k) Net assets 155 ($332k)2023 Revenue 164 ($588k) Expenses 161 ($468k) Net assets 211 ($451k)2024 Revenue 144 ($517k) Expenses 185 ($535k) Net assets 203 ($434k)2025 Revenue 144 ($519k) Expenses 144 ($418k) Net assets 250 ($535k)
202020212022202320242025
Revenue (144)Expenses (144)Net assets (250)Peer revenue range

Balance sheet

Total assets and total liabilities at each year end, in dollars. The largest one-year move in total assets was 2022 to 2023, from $365k to $478k (+31%).

$261k
$280k
$365k
$478k
$453k
$545k
202020212022202320242025
Total assetsTotal liabilities

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.

2020
2021
2022
2023
2024
2025
ContributionsProgram revenueInvestmentOther

79% of Wild Blue Cats’s revenue is contributions — about as donation-reliant as the typical peer (86% for the typical peer).

This organization
Typical peer · 7,042 orgs

Surplus & reserves

Operating surplus or deficit each year, and months of liquidity in hand. 1 of the last 6 reported years ran a deficit.

$70k
’20
$26k
’21
$92k
’22
$120k
’23
−$18k
’24
$101k
’25
4.6
months of
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

Lauri Cross

Executive Director

As listed on its FY2025 Form 990.

202020212022202320242025
Listed6666108
Joined·+0+0+0+7+0
No longer listed·00032
03Who funds it

Who funds it, year by year

2017 → 2023: the base broadened from 2 funders to 9 funders, grant income rose $8k → $111k.

5 of 18 of your funders are donor-advised or pass-through sponsors (tagged DAF) — 22% 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 Wild Blue Cats’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

Wild Blue Cats has a broad base — no single funder exceeds 21% 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

70% 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 Wild Blue Cats.

21%
largest funder
54%
top three
~7
effective funders

Largest funder’s share by year: 2017 87% · 2018 68% · 2019 36% · 2020 40% · 2021 46% · 2022 28% · 2023 45% — 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 Wild Blue Cats's funders are still giving 3 years after their first grant; 67% give in more than one year at all.

first grant+1y+2y+3y+4y+5y

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

Wild Blue Cats draws 77% of its grant income from funders outside Colorado, across 8 states in all.

MI
MA
CA
UT
CO
AZ
NM
TX

In-state vs out-of-state, by year

’17
’18
’19
’20
’21
’22
’23
Colorado out of state home

Funder states come from each funder’s own filing. $106k arriving through sponsors registered in 5 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.

04Its place in the field

Against its field

Wild Blue Cats runs a healthier operating margin than half of the 3,693 animals nonprofits its size.

Operating margin19% · above the median
Months of reserve4.6mo · below the median
Revenue growth (annualized)8% · below the median

this organization peer median middle 50% of peers· 3,693 animals nonprofits $100k–$1M, FY2025

Organizations like Wild Blue Cats

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 Colorado

Nationally

05Profile & governance

Read directly from this organization’s own Form 990, as neutral context.

Where the money goes

90% of spending goes to programs.

Program 90%Management 10%Fundraising 0%

Governance

8
board members
100%
independent
✓Conflict-of-interest policy–Whistleblower policy–Document retention✓Board reviewed the 990–Audited financials

Public support

88%

Share of support from the public (Schedule A) — the basis for its public-charity status.

Screen this organization

A dated, signed PDF of the compliance screen for Wild Blue Cats: 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.

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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 Wild Blue Cats?
Wild Blue Cats (Colorado) receives grants from 18 organizations whose IRS filings report $474,362 to it, the largest being CARROLL PETRIE FOUNDATION ($100,000). 12 of them have funded it in more than one year.
How many funders does Wild Blue Cats have?
IRS filings report 18 organizations giving $474,362 in grants to Wild Blue Cats, 12 of which have funded it in more than one year.
Who is the largest funder of Wild Blue Cats?
CARROLL PETRIE FOUNDATION is the largest funder on record, with $100,000 in grants. The full list of funders is on this page.
How can an organization like Wild Blue Cats find more funders?
Start with the funders already giving here, then look at the foundations that back similar organizations in Colorado. 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 Wild Blue Cats →

These figures are read directly from IRS Form 990 / 990-PF e-file XML: this organization’s own return for FY2025 (financials across 2020–2025), and the filings of 18 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