A Companion to the 2026 Operation HOPE Report Card
A NOTE FROM OUR PRESIDENT & CFO
Why We Publish This
Our report card tells you what we believe we’ve built. This document tells you how to check our work. Every figure here comes from an independent source — Charity Navigator’s own scoring, our IRS Form 990 filings as published by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, and our own consolidated financial statements — not from our marketing materials.
Trust in this sector is earned one audited year at a time. Here is ours.
Brian Betts, President and Chief Financial Officer, Operation HOPE
Charity Navigator’s Four-Star Rating
Operation HOPE has earned its 12th consecutive Four-Star Rating from Charity Navigator, the nation’s largest and most-used independent charity evaluator — the highest distinction it awards. That streak places Operation HOPE in the top 7% of the more than 230,000 organizations Charity Navigator evaluates each year.
A four-star rating isn’t a one-time audit. Charity Navigator re-scores annually against finance, accountability, culture, and impact — so a twelve-year streak means twelve separate, independent years of passing the same bar, not one good year that got repeated in a press release.
| “This Four-Star recognition speaks to the trust placed in Operation HOPE by our supporters, partners, and the clients and communities we serve.” — John Hope Bryant, Founder, Chairman & CEO |
View Operation HOPE’s live Charity Navigator profile →
Functional Expense Ratio
This is the single number most donors and watchdogs check first: of every dollar spent, how much reaches programs versus overhead. Operation HOPE’s ratio has held steady and strong across the last two fiscal years:
| Functional Expense | FY2025 (unaudited) | FY2024 (audited) |
| Program Services | 84.7% | 84.5% |
| Management & General | 10.1% | 10.4% |
| Fundraising | 5.2% | 5.1% |
Consolidated Statement of Activities
| Line Item | FY2025 (unaudited) | FY2024 (audited) |
| Total Revenue & Support | $37,692,278 | $62,697,893 |
| Total Expenses | $49,151,479 | $47,637,487 |
| Change in Net Assets | ($11,459,201) | $15,060,406 |
| Net Assets, End of Year | $38,077,379 | $49,536,580 |
| Total Assets | $44,434,181 | $56,346,064 |
| Total Liabilities | $6,356,802 | $6,809,484 |
FY2025 shows a planned drawdown of net assets rather than a shortfall in giving capacity — contributions and grants were lower year-over-year as major multi-year pledges from prior years were recognized and deployed. We report this plainly rather than smoothing it out, because a transparency document that only shows the flattering year isn’t a transparency document.
Independent IRS Filings
Operation HOPE’s Form 990 — the primary tax return every nonprofit must file — is public record, filed annually with the IRS and independently hosted by ProPublica’s Nonprofit Explorer. It includes officer and key-employee compensation, board composition, and governance disclosures in full.
View Operation HOPE’s Form 990 filings on ProPublica →
HOPE Governing Board of Directors
Every member of Operation HOPE’s governing board — the body legally responsible for oversight of the organization’s finances and mission — serves without compensation. That includes sitting CEOs and senior executives from First Horizon, Ares Management, OpenAI, CCC Intelligent Solutions, Cushman & Wakefield, and the San Francisco 49ers, among others, chaired by John Hope Bryant.
- Bryan Jordan, Vice Chair — Chairman President & CEO, First Horizon Corporation
- Michael Arougheti — President & CEO, Ares Management Corporation
- Sarah Friar — Chief Financial Officer, OpenAI
- Brad Hanson — Audit Committee Chair; former President & CEO, MetaBank
- Tim Wennes — Finance Committee Chair; Board Member, Cushman & Wakefield
- Jed York — Principal Owner and CEO, San Francisco 49ers
A dedicated Audit Committee, chaired independently of management, reviews the organization’s financials each year before they’re finalized — the standard governance check against any single leader controlling the books.
Net Promoter Score: 79
Net Promoter Score measures one blunt question put directly to clients after service: would you recommend us to someone you care about? Most organizations consider a score of 20 to 30 healthy, and anything over 50 exceptional. Operation HOPE closed 2025 at 79, with an overall score of 77 since the metric was introduced in 2023 — a client-reported number the organization cannot dress up after the fact, because it comes straight from the people it serves.
Community Credit Score Index
Built in partnership with Experian and the U.S. Census Bureau — not designed or scored by Operation HOPE alone — the Community Credit Score Index cross-references credit, income, housing, and education data by zip code, and is published as a free public tool rather than an internal metric.
Explore the Community Credit Score Index →
Go Deeper
- Charity Navigator profile — charitynavigator.org/ein/954378084
- IRS Form 990 filings (ProPublica) — projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/954378084
- 2025 Annual Report — Full financials, program detail, and board rosters at OperationHOPE.org
And for anyone interested in our most recent Operation HOPE Report Card for our overall work, and a summary of the work we are presently focused on, you can also find that here, and here.
John Hope Bryant — founder of Bryant Group Ventures, Operation HOPE, Inc, publisher of the Bryant Journal and author of his 7th book Capitalism for All: Inclusive Economics and the Future Proofing of America, now a bestseller. Bryant was recently recognized as a member of the Forbes 250 Greatest Living Self Made Americans, on the occasion of the 250th anniversary of America itself. Get the book →
