50 Largest Foreign Missions Organizations

Pioneers tops the list with $88 million in revenue.  

Below is a list of the 50 largest foreign missions organizations by total revenue from the MinistryWatch 1000 database.

The total revenue for all 50 organizations exceeds $1.1 billion. The largest organization is Pioneers with $88.8 million in revenue and the smallest is International Care Ministries with just over $8 million in revenue.

None of the five largest ministries on the list — Pioneers, Ethnos360, OneHope, Reliant Mission, and Frontiers — filed a Form 990 informational return with the Internal Revenue Service.

The form includes such information as annual revenue, salaries of key employees, names of board members and large contractors, and the amount of money the organization spends on its core mission. It also provides details how much an organization spends on administrative and fundraising. This information is valuable to donors wanting to assess the effectiveness of a ministry; therefore, MinistryWatch takes the position that ministries should complete the Form 990.

MinistryWatch updated the revenue information for ministries who don’t file a Form 990 but are members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) with the financial information in their ECFA profile. Those ministries are denoted with an asterisk.

In addition to the name and revenue, you will also find MinistryWatch’s Financial Efficiency Rating (1 to 5, with 5 being the highest and 0 indicating they don’t file a Form 990),  its Transparency Grade (A, C, D, or F), and its Donor Confidence Score (up to 100).

MinistryWatch has also added a column for government grants received by the organization. That total is found on the ministry’s Form 990.

Among these missions organizations, the Luke Commission received $6.8 million in grants — about one-third of its total revenue. World Help was the next largest grant recipient with $5.3 million in government grants.

You can learn more about each ministry by clicking the ministry’s name. That will take you directly to the ministry’s profile in the MinistryWatch 1000 database.

We have not included missions organizations associated with denominations. If you have questions about your own denominations missions organization, you can and should be able to get financial information through your denomination.

In the past, this list has been combined with bible translation organizations, but we will produce a separate list of the largest bible translation groups in mid-May.