Moses - Wisdom of Madison Inc
Nonprofit profile at a glance
- EIN
- 462055495
- IRS 990-EZ coverage
- 2015–2025
- Forms available
- Form 990-EZ 2025, Form 990-N 2014
- Location
- Madison, WI, USA
- Phone
- 8058444469
- Rating
- 94
- Verdict
- STRONG
- Rating confidence
- Moderate
Reported finances
- Revenue
- $85,356
- Expenses
- $178,169
- Assets
- $216,207
- Liabilities
- $13,909
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Amounts in USD.
Leadership & pay
7 people listed
Executive titles in this filing
- SAUNDRA BROWN (PRESIDENT)
- BARBIE JACKSON (VICE PRESIDENT)
People named in this filing
- SAUNDRA BROWN (PRESIDENT)
- BARBIE JACKSON (VICE PRESIDENT)
- TRICIA HILNER (SECRETARY)
Selected names, not a complete roster or a statement of current roles. Open leadership details for the complete filed list.
Source: IRS Form 990-EZ. Selected filing: tax year 2025. Names and roles reflect this filing, not necessarily current officeholders.
Overview
Mission
Moses is a coalition of faith communities, organizations and individuals sharing a passion for justice, a commitment to community, and a practice of hope. It exists to deepen relationships within and among faith communities; and to empower people to act together for justice in pursuit of their individual and collective values. Moses, as a local organization within the state organization wisdom, inc., is organized to further its purpose by: 1. Increasing the capacity for grassroots leadership to bring about systemic change through ongoing training, education, advocacy, and fundraising. 2. Expanding the scope of influence of each member through creation of a local faith-led organization. 3. Identifying potential leaders among members for training on local, regional, and state issue development and related action strategies. 4. Engaging members in local, regional, and statewide issues campaigns.
What it reported doing in 2025
Racial justice for all children (rjac) task force highlights: 1) the mission of the racial justice for all children (rjac) task force is to eradicate the childhood-to-school-to-prison pipeline. We seek to further moses's mission to dismantle the systems of mass incarceration and mass supervision and to eradicate the racial disparities in our community that contribute to them. We carry out our mission through our three working groups: education advocacy (eag), the housing group (hg), and restorative justice and school wellness (rj/sw): 1) eag: illiteracy is associated with both juvenile and adult criminal-legal system involvement. The ability to read is a prerequisite for success in our society today. Forthese reasons, implementation of wi 2023 act 20, the right to read bill, has continued to be a major focus of the eag's advocacy. Rjac continues to look for opportunities to support how parents are informed about their expectations and rights under act 20. We are concerned that theinformation sent to parents about students who require personalized reading plans may be challenging for some parents to understand. We were pleased to hear that mmsd plans to retain smaller class sizes at the k1 levels. In the second half of 2025, the eag focused on forming the Wisconsin literacy justice coalition (wljc). In july, we convened an online meeting to kick off the wljc. About 15 individuals participated by sharing their priorities, which include continued advocacy around act 20 and promoting tutoring for students who need extra support that teachers do not have time to provide; 2) hg: the housing issue paper approved by moses this year was quite clear: housing justice is racial justice forchildren. Housing justice removes one of the earliest and most devastating barriers to education access, emotional development, and community belonging for black and brown youth. The issue paper highlights three main areas of advocacy: a) supporting the work of the youth action board (yab), outreach, and urban triage to ensure that youth homelessness is rare, brief, and nonrecurring in our community; b) joining other local entities advocating that madison and dane county create additional income-based, affordable housing options for low-income families; and c) advocating for policies and practices to support low-income residents of private developments that provide "affordable" units.
Operating model
- Revenue model
- Mixed. Its operating money came from several sources; no one source provided a clear majority.
- Distribution model
- Direct operator. The filing allocates 100% of reported program-service expenses outside its grant, affiliate-payment, and member-benefit lines. This expense classification does not rule out separately announced grant awards.
The verdict
STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Expenses are high relative to revenue and total assets are small relative to annual expenses; liquid coverage is unknown.
Rating breakdown
- Financial Efficiency: 96
- Transparency & Controls: 100
- Sustainability: 27
- Growth: 100
Detailed rating inputs
Financial Efficiency
- Mission deployment rate: 100%; rating input score 100
- Program expense ratio: 87.6%; rating input score 88
Transparency & Controls
- Consistency checks: 100%; rating input score 100; 51st percentile among comparable filings
- Major donor itemization: Yes; rating input score 100
Sustainability
- Operating margin: -108.7%; rating input score 7; 7th percentile among comparable filings
- Total-asset coverage ratio: 1.21; rating input score 53; 53rd percentile among comparable filings
- Liabilities to assets ratio: 0.06; rating input score 17; 17th percentile among comparable filings
- Officer compensation ratio: 0%; rating input score 56; 56th percentile among comparable filings
Growth
- Program expense growth: 9.8% per year; rating input score 100; 70th percentile among comparable filings
- Revenue growth: 4.5% per year; rating input score 100; 68th percentile among comparable filings
- Asset growth: 14.5% per year; rating input score 100; 78th percentile among comparable filings
Details
- Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 87.6% of spending went to programs
- Governance: Filed governance answers
- Accomplishments: 4 filed program accomplishments · $156K in reported program spending
- Leadership: top reported pay $0 · 7 people listed
- Consistency: 8 of 8 current checks pass
- Schedules: 4 filed schedules
- Filing history: 10 filing years from 2015 to 2025
- Contacts: How to reach this organization
- Money network: Resolved incoming and outgoing counterparties from filed money flows.
- Related organizations: Filed and resolved organization relationships.
- Grant readiness: Federal tax and exclusion status, award history, and grant-maker relationships.
- People: Everyone the filings name, and which of them the filings identify by more than a name.
Key Signals
Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.
- High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 7/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 53/100.
- High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 17/100.
- Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 56/100.