Global Catalytic Ministries Raises Veil of Secrecy on Finances, but Issues Remain

Global Catalytic Ministries has used aggressive fundraising to grow from less than $1 million in income in 2019 to more than $9 million in 2021.  As we reported in 2021, it has shielded its work behind a thick veil of secrecy.

GCM has made some changes since then, increasing its financial transparency, but the ministry continues to shroud its operations and misstate its financial efficiency.

Improved financial transparency

GCM previously declined to conduct an annual financial audit with outside accountants or to release any financial information, but it has since made a change.

“We have made some very significant strides to be as financially transparent as we can,” says the ministry website. GCM has indeed made significant progress in practicing the kinds of financial transparency required of ECFA members.

GCM now makes its audited financial statements from 2019 to 2021 available through a request form on its website. (They say 2022 financial should be available in May.) You can find the 2019 financial statements here. You can find the 2020 financial statements here. You can find the 2021 financial statements here. You can see GCM’s 2022 Annual Report here.

Continuing secrecy about leaders and staffing

GCM continues to be unusually secretive about the people it employs and works with, obscuring nearly all information about the people who carry out its work.

Recent website updates now tell us the names of the COO and Board President but provide no information about them. And there is still no information about other leaders in the U.S. or abroad, board members, or GCM’s founder and CEO, who it identifies as “Brother X.”

GCM recently reaffirmed its commitment to privacy: “On one hand, the best response to a lack of trust is complete openness and transparency,” says the “Leadership” section of its website, but it concludes: “The security of our people will always take precedence over preserving our public image.”

COO Mike Patino told MinistryWatch that the ministry currently has five board members and wants to add new members who will permit their names to be used.

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GCM claims to be a very efficient ministry, saying that 86.3% of its 2021 income went to program, which would place it among some of the most financially efficient nonprofits. But this claim does not stand up to scrutiny.

GCM reported 2021 income of $9,024,559, but spent only $5,160,541, or 57% of its income, on program expenditures, while adding $3 million in unspent funds to its assets. In an interview, Patino suggested that funds spent in 2022 could somehow be applied to its 2021 tally.

Previous years were not much better, meaning that GCM has never achieved the 86.3% figure it claimed for 2021:

• GCM spent only 60% of its 2020 income of nearly $2 million on program.
• In 2019, GCM spent 68% of its $967,261 in income on program.

GCM’s income declined dramatically in 2022, from $9 million in 2021 to $3.4 million in 2022. The ministry used some of some of the funds raised in 2021 for program spending in 2022, which totaled $4.4 million.

GCM’s website claims it spent 80.6% of income on program in 2022 but has not supplied documentation to support that claim.

GCM also currently claims it is spending 75% of 2023 income on program expenditures, which would make this the most efficient year yet, but Patino acknowledged this was a “projection” that isn’t based on actual spending.

Global expansion

Founded in 2011, and granted tax-exempt status in 2014, GCM long focused on Iran, calling itself “part of the Iranian awakening.” It rarely mentioned Afghanistan until American troops left the country in 2021, when it promoted a fundraising campaign to raise $10 million—ten times its total 2019 income—for unspecified work there.

GCM now claims to work in 16 countries, initiating work in the U.S. and Canada with a few workers in 2022, and entering nine new countries in 2023: Bahrain, Israel, Egypt, Italy Argentina, Germany, Australia, Latvia, Norway. GCM says it started 60 new churches in the U.S., Argentina and Norway since 2022 but does not provide information about these churches.

GCM previously claimed that “some of the largest ministries and foundations in the US support us,” including Samaritan’s Purse and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. But it has since deleted these references and published an updated list of partners, which includes Gateway Church, Church of the Highlands, Joyce Meyers’ Hand of Hope, Maclellan Foundation, the National Christian Foundation, and Cornerstone OnDemand Foundation.

EDITOR’S NOTE:  To read more about the challenges of balancing security and transparency, click here.