Summary
What do they do? La Casa de las Madres, EIN 94-2330864, provides emergency shelter, community advocacy and counseling, police-response follow-up, statewide crisis lines, supportive-housing services and prevention. Its 2025 report describes 1,384 Bay Area survivors of all ages receiving direct services. More
Why this approach interests us
- Safety-focused advocacy and practical support may reduce abuse and improve short-term health. External intensive post-shelter advocacy trials provide some support for this pathway.
Our main reservations
- The external intervention differs from La Casa's mixed services. Additionality, advocacy dose, geography and the finite utility bridge are judgments; a 5%-weight favorable world supplies 86.9% of all-beneficiary expected net benefit.
What do you get for your dollar?
A $100,000 ordinary whole-organization gift produces 0.044061 signed prior-weighted Bay QALYs, or $2.3M per DALY. Across all modeled beneficiaries, the estimate is $22,460,767 donor cash and $26,728,312 modeled gross resources per DALY. Observed QALYs and verified marginal capacity remain unknown. Inspect the model, assumptions and scenarios.
- bay whole gift
- $2.3M — $22,695,319 per 10 signed prior-weighted Bay QALYs; residence shares are assumptions
- all beneficiaries
- $2.2M — $22,460,767 donor cash per DALY, not the Bay ranking field
- modeled gross
- $26.7M — all-beneficiary resource sensitivity; verified complete gross resources are unavailable
- giving verdict
- HOLD — no verified marginal capacity or observed QALY estimate
1. What do they do?
La Casa de las Madres, EIN 94-2330864, provides emergency shelter, community advocacy and counseling, police-response follow-up, statewide crisis lines, supportive-housing services and prevention. Its 2025 report describes 1,384 Bay Area survivors of all ages receiving direct services.
Connect with safety and support
Survivors reach crisis response, shelter, a community office or partner co-locations.
Receive appropriate advocacy
Only an assumed adult-eligible fraction receiving an intensive-advocacy-equivalent dose enters the health bridge.
Count finite additional benefit
Apply funding additionality and a signed finite QALY effect; other contacts and overlapping programs are not separately added.
Scope of this review. All FY2025 IRS expense of $4,560,661 is charged. The 1,384 direct-service umbrella is non-additive: 885 community-office users, 815 co-location users, 231 sheltered people, 6,571 shelter service-days, 2,226 police contacts and 6,151 calls/texts are not summed. This retains whole-organization costs while leaving non-advocacy health pathways unquantified, not proven zero.
2. Monitoring and information sharing
La Casa's mixed-age direct-service population
Organization-reported FY2025 activity and finances. Annual report gives a broad 1,384 Bay survivor umbrella alongside overlapping service counts and self-reported outcomes.
Our assessment. Outputs establish delivery, not causal QALYs. Do not sum contacts or interpret success surveys as effects versus a counterfactual.
278 former shelter residents receiving ten weeks of advocacy or control
Randomized trial, Sullivan and Bybee. Authors report reduced violence and better quality-of-life-related outcomes across two-year follow-up, with 95% retained.
Our assessment. An intensive post-shelter intervention is not La Casa's whole portfolio. Present-day dose, adult eligibility and response remain uncertain.
Women experiencing intimate partner abuse in varied settings
Systematic review of randomized and quasi-randomized advocacy trials. Intensive advocacy may improve some short-term quality-of-life and abuse outcomes; evidence is heterogeneous, often low quality, and several outcomes include no benefit.
Our assessment. The NNT≈8 at 24 months is not observed QALY gain or proof of two continuous years without abuse. Null and harm priors remain explicit.
Modeled abused and not-abused states, not La Casa participants
UK decision-model state utilities. Utilities used include 0.63 abused/unidentified, 0.65 seeing an advocate and 0.85 not abused.
Our assessment. Combining the 0.22 gap with an advocacy response rate and finite duration is an analyst heuristic; the full gap is not the measured effect of seeing an advocate.
136 women in nine Dutch shelters
Randomized critical-time-intervention trial. At nine months PTSD improved, but primary quality of life and several re-abuse and mental-health outcomes were null.
Our assessment. Different intervention and setting; supports caution rather than supplying a La Casa coefficient.
La Casa housing support and shelter programs
City executed-agreement reporting and draft funding recommendations. Documented Verona support agreement extends through June2027; separate FY2026–27 shelter support is proposed.
Our assessment. Distinguish executed baseline agreements from proposals; neither demonstrates gift-triggered additional capacity.
3. Qualitative assessment
Safety-focused advocacy and practical support may reduce abuse and improve short-term health. External intensive post-shelter advocacy trials provide some support for this pathway.
Key reservations
- The modeled result is unfavorable and is not a recommendation to give.
- 86.9% of all-beneficiary expected net QALYs comes from a 5%-weight favorable prior.
- No observed La Casa QALY effect, verified advocacy-dose mix or marginal funding offer was found.
- Public funding, other donors and reserves complicate additionality; assets do not establish unrestricted liquid availability.
- The two-year health bridge assumes persistence not established by a 24-month outcome measurement.
- Bay and SF shares are unmeasured residence priors; all costs are retained even for unquantified services.
- In-kind reconciliation and complete external resource costs remain unknown.
Benefits not included in our estimate
- Mortality prevention and lifetime effects
- Separate additive hotline, police-response, shelter, prevention and co-location QALYs
- Child and caregiver health effects beyond the modeled adult advocacy pathway
- Financial savings, housing value and taxpayer savings as QALYs
4. What do you get for your dollar?
Signed expected Bay cost: $2.3M per DALY
Compute each joint scenario's signed QALYs, weight health outcomes, then divide the whole gift by the weighted result. Do not average prices or discard harmful worlds.
DALY is our one-year comparison unit. QALY-based health gains and income-welfare equivalents retain their original assumptions; they are not measured clinical DALYs. These are uncertain estimates, not measured returns or verified donation offers.
How we calculate the estimate
CENTRAL ADVOCACY PATHWAY: QBay = (100000 / 4560661) × 1384 × .70 adult-eligible × .20 full advocacy dose × .15 funding additionality × .05 finite QALY × .98 Bay share
Central Bay QALYs = 0.03; all-beneficiary central donor cost = $3.1M per DALY. The prior-weighted Bay headline is not this central scenario.
Model inputs and assumptions
- Whole annual expense
- $4,560,661 FY2025 IRS (range: Annual report: $4,525,216). No overhead or non-advocacy cost removed. Reported $95,586 in-kind input is not assumed included in IRS expense or mechanically added. Reported accounting; reconciliation incomplete.
- Broad direct-service umbrella
- 1,384 (range: 885 community-office subset diagnostic). Mixed ages and services; overlapping outputs are not added. Organization-reported, not a verified unique-dose census.
- Adult eligibility and full advocacy dose
- 70% × 20% central (range: Adult share 50–85%; dose 5–50%). External intensive post-shelter advocacy evidence cannot be assigned to every person, child, call or brief contact. Analyst priors.
- Funding additionality
- 15% central (range: 0–40%). Public funding, other gifts, reserves and operational capacity may replace or constrain a gift's additional services. Analyst prior; no marginal offer.
- Finite QALY bridge
- 0.05 per full advocacy equivalent (range: -0.02 harm to 0.15 favorable). 1/8 responders × (0.85−0.63) modeled annual utility gap × 2 years = 0.055, rounded down to 0.05. A 24-month abuse endpoint does not establish continuous two-year remission. Advocate-state utility is only 0.65. The 0.15 tail is a wide judgment, not measured benefit; no mortality credit. Unvalidated cross-study heuristic.
- Recipient geography
- 98% Bay / 85% SF central (range: Bay 90–99%; nested SF 70–95%). Annual report supports Bay presence, not exact residence shares. Statewide hotline receives no direct health credit. Analyst residence priors.
- Joint scenario weights
- 5/25/20/25/20/5% (range: Harm / funding-null / evidence-null / cautious / central / favorable). Null and negative outcomes are retained. Favorable contribution is 86.9% of all-beneficiary weighted net QALYs. Subjective priors, not statistical confidence.
- Gross-resource multiplier
- 1.15 central (range: 1.10–1.50). Intended to encompass unreconciled in-kind and unpriced partner inputs. Verified complete gross resource cost remains unavailable. Sensitivity, not complete accounting.
Illustrative $100,000 ordinary gift
- harm: Negative Bay health outcome. 5% weight; -0.01 Bay QALYs. Nonpositive outcomes have no positive cost-effectiveness ratio.
- funding-null: Zero additional health. 25% weight; funding additionality zero. Full gift cost remains.
- evidence-null: Zero health effect. 20% weight; the transferred advocacy effect is zero.
- cautious: 0.00 Bay QALYs. 25% weight; low adult eligibility, dose and funding additionality.
- central: 0.03 Bay QALYs. 20% weight; 0.05 finite QALY per full advocacy equivalent. All-beneficiary central price is $3.1M per DALY.
- favorable: 0.77 Bay QALYs. 5% weight; 0.15 finite QALY per equivalent. All-beneficiary favorable price is $129K per DALY, not a quoted donation offer.
- favorable contribution removed: $17.2M per 10 all-beneficiary QALYs. Original-weight favorable contribution is removed without renormalization; this is the saved model diagnostic, not a Bay ratio.
Uncertainty. The finite bridge combines heterogeneous advocacy and state-utility evidence. Duration, response, eligibility and dose are not measured La Casa effects. No mortality, lifetime or separate additive shelter/prevention benefit is credited. Linear gift scaling is an accounting assumption, not verified large-gift absorption capacity.
5. Funding and previous grants
Establish a priced additional service or preservation plan, its funding counterfactual, unduplicated recipients, advocacy dose and finite health outcomes before recommending a gift.
No verified marginal funding offer. FY2025 IRS revenue is $5,062,993, surplus $502,332 and net assets $13,476,875; assets are not all current unrestricted cash. A city executed-agreement report lists Verona Hotel support services through June2027, total NTE $1,332,681, supporting 65 housing units. A draft FY2026–27 plan recommends $165,000 for shelter/case management; final executed award was not verified. These are baseline funding records, not prices for additional advocacy. Public funding and private gifts overlap; no entire grant is subtracted from whole expense. Promotional $100 shelter-night examples are not binding marginal prices.
This review does not establish a verified marginal funding offer or a complete history of grants.
Opens the organization’s giving page. A general donation may not fund the specific activity modeled here; confirm allocation with the recipient.
6. Sources
- FY2025 annual report. La Casa de las Madres. Official annual report. Published: FY2025; publication date unspecified; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- La Casa filing index, EIN 94-2330864. IRS via ProPublica. Tax-filing mirror. Published: FY2025 filing; filed 2026-02-28 per index; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- FY2024 financial statements. La Casa de las Madres / auditor. Official audited financial statements. Published: FY2024; issue date not recorded; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- Official giving page. La Casa de las Madres. Official donation route. Published: Undated; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Intensive advocacy randomized trial. Sullivan and Bybee / PubMed. Primary randomized study. Published: 1999; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- Advocacy interventions for women experiencing intimate partner abuse. Cochrane / PubMed Central. Systematic review. Published: Date not recorded in accepted source map; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- Intimate-partner-violence utility-state decision model. PubMed Central. Decision-model utility calibration. Published: Date not recorded in accepted source map; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- Dutch critical time intervention randomized trial. International Journal of Public Health. Primary randomized study. Published: 2017; retrieved: 2026-09-10.
- FY2025–26 Q1 executed-agreement report. San Francisco Department of Homelessness and Supportive Housing. Government executed-agreement report. Published: 2025-10-31; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
- Draft FY2026–27 funding recommendations. City and County of San Francisco. Proposed government funding, not executed award. Published: FY2026–27 draft; exact issue date not recorded; retrieved: 2026-09-11.
Annual expenses: years and sources
Average annual expenses (three consecutive fiscal years): $4,447,027. Organization size is separate from the modeled cost-effectiveness of a donation.
La Casa De Las Madres
Form 990/990-EZ reported whole-entity expenses; includes program, administration and fundraising costs, but excludes any costs netted against revenue.
Original returns checked for legal identity, full-year period and total expenses. Latest three linked original returns.