Veterans First

Overview

Mission

Veterans first is the only 501c (3) organization in orange county that works to provide services exclusively to our region's homless and at-risk veteransour organization provides a multitude of serivces including housing, meals, case management, life skills, mental health counseling, benefit counseling, transportation, as well asjob training and employment placement assistance.veterans first works with many reginal and national orgnaizations such as the national coalition of homeless veterans (nchv) vietnam veterans of america (vva) the american legion, elks club, am vets, veterans of foreign wars (vfw) disabled american veterans (dav) wounded warrior battalion - mcb camp pendleton, soldiers project and the orange county continium of care.one of veterans first's founding ebliefs is that the most effective way to assist the veteran in our program is a "veterans helping veterans" strategy, through this model we place incoming vets with a structured substance free environment with those v

Operating model

Revenue model

Earned-program. 77% of the money available for current operations came from fees and other program revenue.

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

SUPPORTED - A large share of available resources goes toward mission work and the filed numbers largely add up. A relatively small share of voting board members are independent and some filing-based governance responses are negative or unanswered.

Rating breakdown

• Financial Efficiency: 93
• Transparency & Controls: 92
• Accountability: 0
• Sustainability: 12
• Growth: 0

Detailed rating inputs

Details

• Where the money goes: 98% of revenue deployed · 83.1% of spending went to programs
• Governance: 0 of 4 board members independent · 0 of 8 filing controls reported
• Programs: 1 filed program accomplishment · $609K in reported program spending
• Leadership: top reported pay $28K · 4 people listed
• Consistency: 25 of 26 current checks pass · 1 finding to review
• Schedules: 3 filed schedules
• Filing history: 4 filing years from 2010 to 2016
• 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.

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.

• High — Accountability: Independent voting board scored 0/100.
• High — Accountability: Governance controls: 7 of 7 not reported.
• High — Sustainability: Operating margin scored 9/100.
• High — Growth: Program expense growth scored 0/100.
• High — Growth: Revenue growth scored 0/100.
• High — Sustainability: Total-asset coverage ratio scored 3/100.
• Moderate — Transparency & Controls: Schedule A contributions reconciliation did not reconcile in the filed values.
• High — Growth: Asset growth scored 0/100.
• High — Sustainability: Liabilities to assets ratio scored 0/100.
• High — Grant Readiness: California registration: this organization is recorded as not currently operating in California.