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Contribution Margin for Communities

Every once in a while, we hear the question: “Why does HQ take a small percentage of the money our chapter raises?” It’s a fair question. In fact, we think people should ask it. We don't want anyone in IW blindly trusting us with their money simply because we're HQ. We want people to understand exactly how the organization works, where the money goes, why we have the structure we have, and what they're getting in return. Unfortunately, sometimes a legitimate question turns into something else. A complaint becomes a rumor, a rumor becomes gossip, and pretty soon somebody is explaining the financial structure of IW to a bunch of other people despite having absolutely no idea what they're talking about. HQ only has a couple full-time staff, plus several part-timers and mostly volunteers. If you have a question about our finances, come ask us. We're happy to talk about it. In fact, we are happy to show you! Check out our most recent financial reports (as of August 2026):


IW doesn't charge traditional membership fees or annual chapter dues. That is a very deliberate decision. We could simply establish some giant annual fee that every chapter has to pay regardless of its size or financial situation, but we don't think that's a particularly good way to build an organization around volunteer-led communities. Imagine you're a brand-new chapter. You're trying to recruit volunteers, find veterans, build relationships in your community, organize your first hikes, raise money, and figure out how to keep everything moving. The last thing we want to do is show up and say, “Congratulations on starting a chapter. Now you owe HQ several thousand dollars every year.” That's not how we want to operate. Instead, we take a small contribution margin from all donations. The percentage changes from year to year, but it's generally around 10 percent. The advantage of this model is that it scales with the chapter. A small chapter that raises a small amount of money isn't forced to come up with a large fixed fee that may be completely disproportionate to its resources. A larger chapter that raises more money contributes more because it is also operating at a larger scale and utilizing more of the organization's infrastructure. It's a much more sustainable model for a national organization made up largely of volunteers, and it allows us to avoid putting an artificial financial burden on small or developing chapters.


And here's something else we want to make very clear: we look forward to the day when we can eliminate this contribution entirely. That is not some secret aspiration we're hiding from you. It's the opposite. Our goal is to build IW into a financially strong enough organization that the HQ infrastructure can eventually be supported without needing to take a contribution from chapter-level fundraising. We would love nothing more than for every dollar raised by a local community to remain in that community. But until we have enough sustainable national revenue to make that possible, somebody has to pay for the infrastructure that makes the entire system work. That's what this contribution is helping to do.


The tricky part is that most of the work HQ does is almost completely invisible when you're standing at the kick-off getting ready for a hike. Nobody looks around at a group of veterans wearing ridiculous shorts and thinks, “Man, I wonder who filed the annual charitable solicitation registration for this organization.” Nobody is dancing around a boombox after a hike thinking about whether the organization's insurance policies are current. Nobody is taking pictures at a retreat thinking about whether the books have been reconciled, whether the tax filings are complete, whether the donation system properly recorded the money that came in, or whether the organization's contracts and policies are up to date. And that's actually the way it should be. The purpose of the national infrastructure is to make a lot of that stuff disappear into the background so that local volunteers can focus on what actually matters: getting veterans together.


An international organization operating across multiple states and countries has a substantial amount of compliance work that has to happen behind the scenes. State and federal nonprofit requirements don't disappear because our people would rather be hiking. Somebody has to keep the organization compliant with federal requirements, somebody has to deal with state requirements, and somebody has to make sure we're legally able to continue operating and fundraising in the places where IW has communities. That work isn't particularly glamorous, but it protects the organization and, just as importantly, protects the chapters and volunteers operating under the IW name.


Then there's insurance. And there is a surprising amount of it. We're organizing events, putting people in vehicles, bringing veterans together, using public and private property, working with volunteers, running hikes and retreats, and generally doing the kind of stuff that makes an insurance company's blood pressure rise. We need the appropriate insurance infrastructure and risk management behind those activities. A local chapter shouldn't have to independently figure out how to build an entire insurance program for a national nonprofit. That's part of what the HQ organization provides.


Accounting is another one of those things nobody notices until it's screwed up. Money comes in, and it has to be tracked. Donations need to be recorded. Accounts have to be reconciled. Financial reports need to be produced. Tax and nonprofit filings need to happen. Financial controls need to exist. There are banking systems, donation platforms, credit-card processing systems, recurring donations, receipts and a whole pile of other administrative plumbing underneath the fundraising that people actually see. None of that is particularly exciting. But if you want to operate a legitimate national nonprofit, it's unavoidable. We would much rather have our volunteers spending their time talking to veterans than trying to become amateur nonprofit accountants.


There is also legal and risk-management work. Contracts have to be reviewed. Policies have to exist. Questions about events, volunteers, property, liability, trademarks, nonprofit law and organizational responsibilities have to be answered. When a chapter encounters something strange or complicated, there is supposed to be somebody at the national level who can help them navigate it. That's one of the fundamental advantages of being part of an international organization. A chapter shouldn't have to reinvent the wheel every time it encounters a problem that another chapter has already solved.


Then there is technology. Websites, databases, email, communications systems, software, donor systems, cybersecurity, financial platforms and all the other digital infrastructure required to operate a national organization don't magically appear because everybody really likes veterans. Someone has to maintain that stuff. Someone has to pay for it. Someone has to make sure it works. And when it doesn't work, someone has to fix it. Again, most people don't notice any of this when it is working correctly. That's kind of the definition of infrastructure.


HQ also exists to support chapter leadership. We answer questions. We help new chapters get established. We troubleshoot problems. We help volunteers navigate the administrative side of running a community. We develop training and leadership resources. We work on national fundraising, grants, corporate relationships, communications, marketing and other things that would be difficult or impossible for every individual chapter to duplicate independently. When IW gets national attention, when we build relationships with donors or sponsors, when we develop programs that can be used by local communities, when we create resources that save a chapter from having to spend weeks figuring something out on its own, that's national infrastructure working on behalf of local communities.


And then there is the stuff that nobody sees until something goes wrong: governance, financial oversight, policies, board responsibilities, internal controls, reporting, legal requirements and all of the other boring adult supervision required to make sure a national nonprofit doesn't turn into a complete shitshow. “We're all volunteers and we're just trying to help veterans” is a great description of our spirit. It is not an accounting system. It is not a legal structure. It is not an insurance policy. And it is definitely not a substitute for financial controls.


The philosophy behind all of this is pretty simple: we operate on a highly lean management philosophy. We don't want to build some giant corporate headquarters with layers upon layers of management sitting around inventing new ways to justify their existence. We don't want an organization where an enormous percentage of every dollar raised gets consumed by administration. We want to put as much money, energy and human effort as possible into the mission. That means getting veterans out of isolation. That means hikes. That means retreats. That means community. That means giving people a reason to get off the couch, put on a ridiculous pair of shorts and reconnect with other human beings. The administrative infrastructure exists to enable that work. It does not exist to become the work.

That's an important distinction because “overhead” can sometimes sound like a dirty word in the nonprofit world. But not all overhead is waste. Some overhead is what allows the mission to happen safely, legally and sustainably. The goal isn't to eliminate every administrative expense. The goal is to make sure every administrative dollar is actually doing something useful. We constantly have to ask ourselves: Does this help the mission? Does this protect the organization? Does this make our chapters stronger? Does this make it easier for volunteers to do what they came here to do? If the answer is no, we should probably be cutting it.


We also don't believe that “trust us” is an acceptable financial transparency policy. We want to be able to show you the numbers. We publish our financial information in other posts on this blog, and we'll link those posts at the bottom of this article. Go read them. Look at the numbers. Look at the revenue. Look at the expenses. Look at how the organization actually operates. If something doesn't make sense, ask us about it. Our stated goal is to become the most financially transparent nonprofit in history. That's a pretty fucking high bar, but we're perfectly comfortable setting the bar there.


And if you still have questions after reading everything, that's exactly what we want. Every Friday, we hold virtual open office hours for people within IW leadership who want to come directly to the people making the decisions and ask questions. You don't have to rely on what somebody told somebody who heard something from somebody else six months ago. You can come directly to the source. If you don't understand the contribution margin, ask. If you don't understand where money goes, ask. If you think we're doing something stupid, tell us. If you think we're spending too much money on something, tell us. If you have an idea for how we could do something better or cheaper, we're interested in hearing it. We would much rather have a direct, uncomfortable conversation than watch rumors and gossip spread through the organization.


Because at the end of the day, this isn't about HQ getting money. It's about the entire IW organization sharing the cost of the infrastructure that allows the chapters to exist, operate and focus on their actual purpose. We're trying to build a national organization that can support communities without strangling them with bureaucracy or financial requirements. We're trying to make it easier, not harder, for volunteers to do this work. And we're trying to build something financially sustainable enough that one day we can look at that roughly 10 percent contribution and say, “You know what? We don't need it anymore.”


That would be a hell of a day.


Until then, we're going to keep running lean, publishing the numbers, answering the questions, challenging ourselves to spend intelligently and putting as much of our collective energy as possible into the reason IW exists in the first place: getting veterans out of isolation and back into the tribe.


And yes, sometimes we're going to do it wearing a pair of silkies.


That's kind of our thing.


Semper Silkies. Always Healing.


View our most recent financial reports (as of August 2026):



 
 
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