FOLLOW THE MONEY
There is an old rule in investigative journalism that survives because it works: when an institution becomes difficult to understand, follow the money. Budgets tell you what an organization can afford. Grants tell you what governments and donors believe they are purchasing. Contracts tell you what an institution has promised to provide. Tax returns show how money is classified after it is spent. The difficult part is connecting all of those numbers to the person standing at the other end of the system. In the case of a domestic-violence organization, that person may have fled a home with a garbage bag of clothing, no vehicle, no security deposit, no safe place to sleep after shelter, children who need to be moved, an employer the offender knows about, and a bank account that may already have been emptied or controlled by someone else.
That is why the financial investigation into Sojourner Family Peace Center cannot begin and end with the question of whether the organization spends millions of dollars on domestic-violence programming. It unquestionably does. The more difficult question is what those millions actually purchase for the survivors whose lives justify the grants, appropriations, donations, contracts, fundraising campaigns, government partnerships and institutional infrastructure surrounding the organization.
The numbers are substantial. The most recent financial records examined for this investigation show an organization with approximately $9.44 million in annual revenue, approximately $9.52 million in annual expenses, approximately $15.92 million in assets and approximately $15.56 million in net assets. Contributions and grants accounted for approximately $7.20 million, or roughly 76 percent of total revenue. Approximately $6.7 million was classified as program-service expense, approximately $1.3 million as management and general expense, and approximately $1.55 million as fundraising expense. Sojourner is not a financially insignificant neighborhood charity operating on donations collected in a coffee can. It is a multimillion-dollar institution embedded within a network of government funding, philanthropy, law enforcement, social services and public-private partnerships.
Those numbers initially create a reassuring picture. Approximately 70.5 percent of expenses classified as program services sounds like an organization directing most of its resources toward its mission. That fact deserves to be acknowledged because an investigation should not manipulate accounting terminology to manufacture a scandal. But “program expense” does not mean “money given to a victim.” It is an accounting classification that can include salaries, facilities, technology, contractors, shelter operations, advocacy infrastructure and the machinery required to operate programs. Those expenditures can absolutely benefit survivors. What the classification does not establish is how much of that spending was converted into the material resources a survivor can actually use to stabilize a life outside the shelter.
That distinction becomes impossible to ignore when Sojourner's reported direct assistance to individuals is examined. For the most recent reporting period analyzed, Sojourner reported $81,593 in grants or other assistance across 1,883 individual-recipient instances. Against approximately $9.52 million in total expenses, that Schedule I category represented approximately 0.86 percent of organizational spending. Put another way, for every $100 Sojourner spent, approximately 86 cents appeared in the IRS category identifying grants or other assistance to individuals. Approximately $70.50 of the same $100 was classified broadly as program spending, approximately $13.20 as management and general, and approximately $16.20 as fundraising. Those categories do not measure the same thing, and it would be misleading to pretend they do. But their enormous difference is precisely why the public should be asking what the millions classified as “program” spending actually produced for survivors.
The comparison with fundraising is particularly difficult to ignore. Sojourner reported approximately $1,547,107 in fundraising expense during the same period in which it reported $81,593 in Schedule I direct assistance. That works out to approximately $18.96 spent on fundraising for every $1 reported as direct grants or assistance to individuals. That ratio does not establish waste, fraud or misuse. Fundraising costs money, and successful fundraising can finance shelter beds, advocates, buildings, attorneys, children's services and programs that unquestionably have value. But an institution asking the public to finance its mission should also be prepared to explain why the identifiable direct-assistance number is so small compared with the machinery used to raise and administer money.
Then there are the contractors. The same financial record identifies approximately $813,000 paid to five contractors receiving more than $100,000 each, including approximately $202,460 to the Milwaukee Police Department for staffing, $179,421 to Milwaukee County for staffing, $157,695 for third-party information-technology support, $139,623 for conference-room technology installation, and $133,420 to the Alma Center for staffing. Those five payments alone approached ten times the $81,593 reported as direct assistance to individuals. Again, that does not mean those expenditures were illegitimate or did not benefit victims. It means the financial priorities are large enough that the public should be permitted to see what each layer of institutional spending ultimately produced.
The $81,593 becomes even more revealing when the 1,883 reported assistance instances are broken apart. Approximately $25,000 went toward lock changes across 143 instances; $19,000 toward clothing and food gift cards across 826 instances; $8,000 toward gas gift cards across 202 instances; $7,000 toward other assistance across 13 instances; $6,000 toward rent or security deposits across six instances; $5,000 toward emergency housing or hotel assistance across five instances; $5,000 toward language interpretation across 14 instances; $4,000 toward taxi transportation across 141 instances; approximately $2,000 toward bus tickets across 531 instances; $400 toward utility assistance for one instance; and $150 toward out-of-town transportation for one instance. Public IRS-derived data independently identify the same 1,883 recipient instances and approximately $82,000 in assistance.
There is nothing trivial about a bus ticket when someone has no transportation. There is nothing meaningless about a food card when someone has no money. Changing a lock can prevent an offender from walking through a victim's door. A gas card can get someone to work, court or an apartment showing. Those interventions matter. But they are not interchangeable with housing stabilization, and that distinction disappears when everything is rolled into one giant number describing how many people were “assisted.”
Clothing and food gift cards represented approximately 43.9 percent of the reported recipient instances. Bus tickets represented another 28.2 percent, and gas cards approximately 10.7 percent. Together, those three categories represented approximately 82.8 percent of all reported assistance instances. That means a very large portion of the count was generated by comparatively small forms of immediate assistance rather than substantial financial interventions capable of independently securing housing or long-term stability.
The housing numbers are where the financial record becomes particularly uncomfortable. Only six reported instances involved approximately $6,000 in rent or security-deposit assistance. Only five involved approximately $5,000 in emergency housing or hotel assistance. One additional instance involved $400 in utility assistance. Taken together, those categories represented only 12 of the 1,883 reported assistance instances, approximately 0.64 percent of the total, and approximately $11,400. Against the organization's approximately $9.52 million in total spending, those identifiable rent, deposit, hotel and utility categories represented approximately 0.12 percent.
That does not prove Sojourner spent only $11,400 helping people obtain or maintain housing. Housing assistance may be financed through government programs, partner agencies, services not reportable on Schedule I, or other mechanisms not visible in this particular IRS category. But that limitation cuts both ways. If millions of additional dollars are being converted into deposits, rent, permanent placements, hotel stays, relocation costs and durable housing stabilization through other programs, show us the numbers. The answer to an incomplete public record should be more transparency, not an expectation that the public simply assume the missing outcomes exist.
The pattern is not confined to a single year. Across six comparable filings examined in this investigation, Sojourner reported approximately $53,000, $60,000, $85,000, $186,000, $113,000 and $81,593 in grants or assistance to individuals. Combined, that is approximately $578,600 against approximately $49.54 million in total organizational expenditures, or roughly 1.17 percent. That does not mean only 1.17 percent of Sojourner's spending benefited survivors. It means something narrower, but still extremely important: direct financial assistance identifiable in that reporting category represented a remarkably small component of an enormous institutional spending structure.
That distinction matters because a domestic-violence victim does not live inside an IRS Form 990. A victim lives in the world of rent, security deposits, utility bills, childcare, food, employment, transportation, legal protection and the terrifying question of where to sleep after the shelter stay ends. An advocacy contact can matter. A referral can matter. A shelter night can save someone's life. But a referral is not an apartment. A conversation is not a security deposit. A shelter night is not a permanent address. A bus ticket is not economic stabilization. Counting all of those interventions as “services” may be completely legitimate for program reporting, but the public should not confuse the number of institutional activities with the number of lives materially stabilized.
And then there is the government money.
City of Milwaukee records establish that the relationship between Sojourner and Milwaukee government is not occasional. It is recurring and institutional. The Milwaukee Police Department budget contains a dedicated $27,600 Sojourner Family Peace Center special-fund appropriation. City budget records show that appropriation in 2022 and 2023, and the 2024 adopted budget again carried $27,600 for Sojourner. The City's Police budget presentation continued the same amount into the 2025 proposal. The relationship goes further back than five years: Milwaukee's 2017 budget described the same $27,600 as operating support for Sojourner.
That matters because this is not simply private philanthropy. These are public dollars embedded inside a police budget. When government money enters a domestic-violence institution, the public acquires a legitimate interest in understanding what the money purchases, what performance requirements accompany it, what records document the expenditure, and whether the funded activity accomplishes what taxpayers were told it would accomplish.
The City's Community Development Grant Administration records add another layer. In 2023, Milwaukee allocated $98,000 in Community Development Block Grant funding to Sojourner for emergency shelter for domestic-violence victims and another $133,000 for domestic-violence case management and legal assistance. That is $231,000 in CDBG funding in those two categories alone. City records show the same $98,000 and $133,000 funding levels for 2024.
The pattern continued. Milwaukee's 2025 funding records again recommended $98,000 for Sojourner's emergency domestic-violence shelter and $133,000 for domestic-violence case management and legal assistance. The 2026 CDBG funding schedule likewise identifies the same $98,000 and $133,000 categories. This is not a one-time emergency grant. It is a recurring public funding relationship in which taxpayer-supported dollars are explicitly attached to shelter, case management and legal assistance for domestic-violence victims.
Separate Emergency Solutions Grant funding further expands the public investment. The records provided for this investigation identify $95,000 in 2024 ESG funding for emergency shelter and $107,500 in approved 2026 ESG funding specifically for emergency shelter for domestic-violence victims. Those dollars matter not merely because of their size, but because federal community-development funding does not exist in an accountability vacuum. The City administers these programs through grant agreements, reimbursement systems, performance reporting and federal compliance structures. The point of identifying the funding is therefore not to suggest that receiving government money is suspicious. It is to identify who possesses the records necessary to determine whether the public received what it paid for.
The financial relationship between Sojourner and the Milwaukee Police Department becomes still more significant when the Milwaukee County Domestic Violence High Risk Team is examined. In Common Council File No. 252174, Milwaukee authorized MPD to accept a $773,751 subaward from Sojourner Family Peace Center, with a City share of zero and a grantor share of $773,751. The money flows from Sojourner to MPD in that particular arrangement, not from the City to Sojourner. But the direction of the money does not make the relationship less important. It demonstrates a formal, Council-approved operational and financial partnership involving domestic-violence cases at the highest levels of lethality risk.
The purpose stated in the City record is extraordinary in its seriousness. The High Risk Team exists to increase the capacity to identify and manage domestic-violence cases at the highest risk for homicide. That is not peripheral programming. It is government and nonprofit infrastructure designed around the possibility that someone will be killed if the system fails.
That relationship also exists within a broader federal funding environment. Senator Tammy Baldwin's FY2024 directed-spending requests included $537,000 for Sojourner's Domestic Violence High Risk Team, describing a multidisciplinary operation involving advocates, MPD, the Milwaukee County District Attorney's Office, the Wisconsin Department of Corrections and suburban law enforcement agencies to identify domestic-violence cases at the highest risk for lethality. For FY2027, Congresswoman Gwen Moore has identified $1.35 million in requested community-project funding for Sojourner to sustain and expand the High Risk Team's work identifying cases at greatest risk for homicide or near-fatal violence. These are funding requests rather than proof that every requested dollar was ultimately received, but they demonstrate the scale and governmental importance attached to Sojourner's work.
So follow that money all the way to the victim.
If hundreds of thousands of dollars are attached to emergency shelter, what outcomes did that money purchase? If another $133,000 is identified for domestic-violence case management and legal assistance, how many victims actually obtained legal assistance? If millions are classified as program services, how many survivors left shelter with permanent housing? How many received deposits? How many received rent assistance? How many remained housed three months later? Six months later? One year later? How many returned to an abusive household because they could not financially survive outside it? How many became homeless after shelter? How many referrals actually resulted in a completed service? How many people counted as “served” received a telephone number, and how many received the material assistance necessary to change the trajectory of their lives?
Those questions are not hostile to domestic-violence services. Those questions are the reason domestic-violence funding exists.
Sojourner itself publicly describes its mission in terms much larger than temporary shelter. Its website says it provides a pathway to peace and opportunities for survivors to make lasting changes for themselves and their families, and describes itself as Wisconsin's most comprehensive provider of domestic-violence prevention and intervention services, serving nearly 10,000 clients annually. Those are consequential promises. They are also measurable ones.
The organization's own financial reporting identifies substantial service activity. The records examined for this investigation report 16,492 shelter nights for 359 individuals, thousands of advocacy contacts and substantial program activity. Shelter and hotline services accounted for approximately $1.5 million in reported expenses, Family Peace Center activity approximately $2.1 million, advocacy approximately $1.1 million and other program services approximately $2 million. Those numbers demonstrate activity. What they do not independently demonstrate is outcome.
That is the accounting distinction the public needs to understand. Outputs are not outcomes. A shelter night is an output. An advocacy contact is an output. A hotline call is an output. A referral is an output. A bus ticket is an output. A completed safety plan is an intervention. A security deposit that moves someone into an apartment is an intervention. Permanent housing maintained six months later is an outcome. A survivor who does not return to an offender because the survivor can finally afford to live independently is an outcome.
The Foundation makes the financial picture larger still. The records examined in this investigation show that Sojourner Foundation, the related fundraising organization supporting the Family Peace Center, reported approximately $12.51 million in FY2024 revenue, including approximately $12.08 million in contributions, and approximately $5.20 million in expenses. A recent filing identifies approximately $4.23 million in Foundation support to Sojourner Family Peace Center and its operations. Those figures cannot simply be added to the operating organization's revenue because doing so could double-count transfers between related entities, and Foundation assets cannot automatically be treated as unrestricted shelter cash. Donor restrictions and other limitations matter. But the Foundation demonstrates the magnitude of philanthropic resources circulating through the broader Sojourner structure.
There is also a historical financial event that deserves documentary explanation rather than reckless accusation. At the end of FY2020, the records examined for this investigation show Sojourner Family Peace Center with approximately $22.09 million in liabilities and negative $3.10 million in net assets. By the end of FY2021, liabilities had fallen to approximately $317,585, while net assets had risen to approximately $18.30 million. That is an approximately $21.78 million reduction in liabilities. The records presently available establish the accounting change; they do not yet establish that Sojourner received a $21 million debt forgiveness or donation. Calling it that without the underlying audit documentation would be irresponsible. What can responsibly be said is that a liability reduction of approximately $21.8 million occurred and deserves a complete documentary explanation.
The Foundation's activity during that same period makes reconciliation more important. The records examined show approximately $4.21 million in Foundation revenue and $18.48 million in Foundation expenses during FY2021, producing an approximately $14.28 million deficit. That does not prove wrongdoing, theft, diversion or financial misconduct, and this investigation is not making any such accusation. It does mean that the underlying audited financial statements, transaction records and inter-entity accounting should be examined so the public can understand exactly what occurred. If the transactions were entirely ordinary and legitimate, the records should make that easy to establish.
That evidentiary discipline is important because the financial story is already serious enough without manufacturing one.
The central question is not whether Sojourner spends money. It plainly does. The question is not whether shelter employees perform valuable work. Many plainly do. The question is not whether food cards, bus tickets, lock changes, advocates, attorneys, hotline workers, security personnel or emergency beds help victims. They can.
The question is whether an institution moving millions of dollars every year can demonstrate that those millions are producing proportional, durable stabilization for the people whose suffering raises the money in the first place.
That question has become considerably more urgent because of what my broader investigation of Sojourner has documented. I entered Sojourner as a documented domestic-violence victim seeking safety and services. During my stay, I repeatedly attempted to determine what programs, financial assistance, housing resources and other services were actually available. By August 31, I was documenting my Twelfth request for a comprehensive list of available resources and programs. The repeated difficulty obtaining a clear accounting of what assistance existed was one of the reasons the financial architecture eventually became part of the investigation. It provides a reason to compare what an institution tells governments, donors and the public it provides against what residents can actually identify and access while living inside the program. And that is where this becomes more than an accounting story.
City records show recurring public money specifically designated for emergency shelter for domestic-violence victims. They show recurring money specifically designated for domestic-violence case management and legal assistance. Police budgets contain a dedicated Sojourner appropriation. Federal and City-administered funding flows through the shelter system. Sojourner and MPD are formal partners in a program designed to protect victims facing the highest risk of homicide. At the same time, Sojourner's own IRS reporting identifies only $81,593 in one category of direct assistance to individuals against approximately $9.52 million in annual spending, with only a small portion of those reported assistance instances involving rent, deposits, emergency housing or utilities. That establishes a public-accountability question that cannot responsibly be ignored.
The City of Milwaukee possesses oversight tools precisely because public funding comes with records. At minimum, those records should include applicable grant agreements, subrecipient agreements, contracts, reimbursement documentation, activity reports, performance reports, monitoring records, audits, compliance reviews and corrective-action materials. The appropriate governmental bodies can determine which records exist for each funding stream and what monitoring obligations apply. Those records should now be examined together rather than one grant at a time.
For at least the last five years, the City and appropriate oversight bodies should identify every CDBG award, ESG award, Police Department special-fund appropriation, contract, subaward, subrecipient agreement, reimbursement, performance report, monitoring review, corrective action, program evaluation, audit, compliance review and complaint involving Sojourner Family Peace Center or Sojourner Foundation. The question should not simply be whether the paperwork was filed. The question should be what taxpayers purchased and what happened to the survivors the money was intended to serve.
The Board of Sojourner should be asking the same thing. For every dollar classified as program service, what did it purchase? How many unique survivors received the resulting service? How many interventions were completed? How many referrals actually connected? How many people were housed? How many deposits were paid? How many people remained housed? How many left shelter for homelessness? How many returned to an abusive environment? How much flexible financial assistance was available? How much went unspent? How often were survivors denied assistance, and why? How different were outcomes by sex, disability, race, family status and program?
There is nothing radical about those questions. They are what accountability looks like when the mission involves human lives.
The simplest version of the financial record is also the hardest one to look away from. In the most recent period examined, Sojourner spent approximately $9.52 million. Approximately $6.7 million was classified as program spending. Approximately $1.55 million was spent on fundraising. Approximately $81,593 appeared as direct grants or other assistance to individuals. Among 1,883 reported assistance instances, 826 involved clothing or food gift cards, 531 involved bus tickets, 202 involved gas cards and 143 involved lock changes. Six involved rent or security deposits. Five involved emergency housing or hotels. One involved utility assistance.
It means the public should stop being handed giant institutional numbers without being shown, with equal precision, what those numbers became when they reached the human being they were raised to help.
Across six comparable reporting periods, approximately $49.54 million moved through the operating organization's expenditure structure while approximately $578,600 was reported as grants or assistance to individuals—approximately 1.17 percent. Again, that does not prove only 1.17 percent of spending benefited survivors. It proves that direct financial assistance represented a very small identifiable component of an enormous institutional system.
If Sojourner can demonstrate that millions more were converted into successful housing placements, deposits financed through partner programs, rental assistance outside Schedule I, meaningful legal protection, individualized safety planning, post-shelter stabilization and measurable reductions in survivors returning to dangerous environments, publish those numbers. They belong in the story. They would materially change the analysis. But if an institution can document every grant it receives, every donor it solicits, every program it operates, every contact it counts and every dollar it classifies as a program expense, while being unable to demonstrate what happened to survivors after those contacts ended, then there is a problem much larger than nonprofit accounting.
There is a difference between funding an institution and funding a survivor's escape from violence. There is a difference between serving someone and stabilizing someone. There is a difference between a referral and a result, a shelter bed and a home, a bus ticket and an exit strategy, a program expense and a changed life.
Victims and children are inside this institution now. That is why these records should not be treated as an academic exercise or something to revisit during the next annual report. If this investigation has misunderstood how the money reaches survivors, Sojourner and the governmental agencies financing its programs possess the records necessary to prove it. If the records instead show that millions of dollars in institutional activity produce dramatically smaller amounts of material survivor stabilization, then donors, taxpayers, policymakers and victims deserve to know that too.
Follow the money far enough and eventually the accounting ends.
A survivor is standing there.
That survivor is the entire point of the money.