Sophia Institute Press

Overview

Mission

To lead souls to heaven through Catholic publishing and teacher programs—“Please keep our work and our staff in your prayers as we carry out our mission of leading souls to heaven.”. We launched this program from scratch in 2014 and now have over 250,000 students using our religion textbooks every day of the school year in more than 900 schools and 1,500 parishes. We’ve also trained over 45,000 teachers in 75 dioceses through our intensive teacher training programs hosted across the country. We set bold, audacious goals each year, and thanks to God’s grace, we exceed them **“beyond our fondest hopes and desires”** each and every year. Please keep our work and our staff in your prayers as we carry out our mission of leading souls to heaven. How You Can Help.

Operating model

Revenue model

Donor-supported. 89% of the money available for current operations came from contributions and gifts.

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.

• Includes noncash contributions: Reported contributions include donated property or goods.

The verdict

STRONG - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. Fundraising costs are high for each dollar raised and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.

Rating breakdown

• Financial Efficiency: 87
• Transparency & Controls: 70
• Accountability: 95
• Sustainability: 66
• Growth: 100

Detailed rating inputs

Details

• What they do: 1 programs and campaigns described on the official site
• Where the money goes: 100% of revenue deployed · 79.7% of spending went to programs
• Governance: 5 of 5 board members independent · 7 of 8 filing controls reported
• Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $4.3M in reported program spending
• Leadership: top reported pay $228K · 5 people listed · 1 of 6 pay-setting controls reported
• Highest-paid contractors: 5 contractors listed · $2.3M reported
• Consistency: 31 of 31 current checks pass
• Schedules: 6 filed schedules · includes major donors and executive pay
• Filing history: 11 filing years from 2010 to 2020
• Contacts: How to reach this organization
• Money network: 1 filed money-flow record
• 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.
• Staff and benefit plans: Retirement and health plans the organization files with the Department of Labor, and the people in them.

Key Signals

Signals prioritize questions for review. They are not findings of misconduct.

Grant-readiness screening is separate from the live rating, not a measure of program quality. Review the source records before making a grant decision.

• Moderate — Financial Efficiency: Fundraising efficiency scored 47/100.
• Review — Accountability: Governance controls: Other executive compensation review process not reported.
• Moderate — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 46/100.
• Moderate — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 46/100.
• Review — Sustainability: Officer compensation ratio scored 59/100.
• High — Grant Readiness: Automatic revocation: this organization had its federal tax-exempt status automatically revoked.