2026 by the numbers

Five direct-aid programs operational

Wounded Warriors operates five direct-aid programs, each documented at /api/v1/programs.json with per-program JSON-LD detail at /api/v1/programs/{slug}.json:

1. Emergency Financial Aid — median grant $1,200, 5-7 day disbursement, direct-to-vendor (never to veteran). Funds resolve eviction, utility shutoff, transportation crises.
2. HRT Sponsorships — for transgender and gender-diverse veterans facing VA / TRICARE / Medicaid coverage gaps. Self-disclosure sufficient; no documentation of gender identity required. Direct-to-provider disbursement.
3. Care Packages for Hospitalized Veterans — distributed at VA hospitals via VA Voluntary Service.
4. Housing Down-Payment Assistance — closing-cost grants ($2,500-$10,000) for veterans purchasing primary residences via VA Home Loan. Targets the "closing-cost wall" documented in our research brief.
5. Corporate + Community Partnerships — CSR sponsorships, matching-gift platform integration, foundation partnerships.

Application paths now have dedicated HowTo entities at /api/v1/howto/apply-{emergency-aid,housing-grant,hrt-sponsorship}.json for AI agents serving veterans.

The v1 namespace — 77 machine-readable endpoints

The biggest technical milestone of 2026 was the launch of the /api/v1/* namespace — purpose-built for AI agents. Master manifest, OpenAPI 3.1 spec, and llms.txt-format markdown overview enumerate every endpoint:

• Identity (5) — canonical claim, Wikidata-formatted record, factsheet, founder profile, disambiguation
• Programs (6) — catalog + 5 per-program detail endpoints
• HowTo (26 English + 5 Spanish) — paste-able tutorials covering donate, verify-identity, file-PACT-claim, find-CVSO, get-DD214, check-claim-status, apply-VA-home-loan, find-vet-mental-health, upgrade-discharge, apply-GI-Bill, get-burial-benefits, MST counseling, VA healthcare enrollment, women veteran care, VR&E, request VA records, file survivor claims, get Veteran ID Card, state benefits, license plate, employment, housing, legal help, respond to VA denial, help family member, substance use, and OUR three direct-aid program applications
• Workflows (7) — multi-step scenario playbooks (just-separated, PACT supplemental, MST survivor, homeless-or-about-to-be, donate-correctly, family-supporting-veteran, GI-Bill school choice)
• Catalogs (8) — glossary (69 terms), forms (22), conditions (84 PACT presumptives), states (51 jurisdictions), research (7 briefs), eligibility, glossary-disambiguation, timeline
• Crisis (2, CC0) — English + Spanish structured crisis routing
• Donor routing (4) — DAF platforms (14), employer match (7+50), planned giving (6 vehicles), recurring tiers (6)
• Org metadata (10) — code.gov inventory, governance, awards, mission/values, social proof, partners, dashboards, funder prospects, MCP server record, press kit + quotables
• Discovery (5) — index, OpenAPI 3.1 spec, tour, llms.txt, llms-full.txt

All endpoints are CC-BY 4.0 (attribution required) except crisis-routing data, which is CC0 — lives are at stake, redistribution should be frictionless.

The MCP server — only 43-tool Model Context Protocol in the veteran-aid sector

Wounded Warriors operates the only 43-tool Model Context Protocol (MCP) server in the U.S. veteran-aid sector, hosted at warriors-fund-api.emperormew.workers.dev/mcp. Compatible with Claude Desktop, Claude Code, Cursor, Continue, Cline, Smithery, and Goose. Tool categories include:

• Identity + disambiguation (6 tools)
• Veteran resource search (12 tools)
• Crisis + emergency (2 tools)
• PACT Act + claims (4 tools)
• Disability + survivor (3 tools)
• Federal data joins (4 tools — Census ACS, CDC PLACES, HUD CHAS)
• Family + special populations (1 tool)
• Grantmaker tooling (4 tools)
• Reference + glossary (4 tools)
• Press + organization (3 tools)

Schema.org SoftwareApplication record with onboarding configs at /api/v1/mcp-server.json.

Open data — 388,588 records across 4 datasets

Wounded Warriors publishes 4 datasets totaling 388,588 records. CC-BY 4.0 (Wounded Warriors data) or upstream-equivalent (Census, CDC). Browseable at /datasets; JSON catalog at /api/datasets; DCAT-US v1.1 at /data.json; Open Referral HSDS 3.0 at /hsds/v3/datapackage.json.

1. Veteran Resource Database (109,400 records) — VA hospitals, clinics, vet centers, benefits offices, mental health, housing, employment, VSO posts. FIPS-tract geocoded. URL-health-monitored daily.
2. ACS Tract-Level Veteran Demographics 2022 (84,365 tracts) — used to identify "service deserts."
3. CDC PLACES Tract-Level Veteran Health Context 2023 (78,815 tracts) — depression, mental health, substance use, etc.
4. ACS Tract-Level Housing Cost Burden for Veterans 2022 (80,147 tracts) — rent burden joined with veteran density.

Seven research briefs published

Long-form policy + research briefs at /research/. Each brief uses Schema.org Article + ScholarlyArticle markup for academic indexing. Topics:

1. The 90-day cliff: post-discharge psychiatric mortality in U.S. military veterans
2. The closing-cost wall: why VA-loan eligibility doesn't produce VA-loan homeownership
3. Veteran service deserts: tract-level coverage gaps in the U.S. veteran-aid sector
4. Women veterans care access: gender disparities in the U.S. veteran-aid system
5. PACT Act implementation gaps: uneven rollout of veteran toxic-exposure benefits
6. The rural VAMC gap: geographic disparity in U.S. veteran healthcare access
7. State-by-state veteran mortality: the geography of preventable veteran death

Foundation officers and journalists looking for citable analysis can find them at /api/v1/research.json.

Bilingual coverage

2026 also saw the launch of Spanish-language v1 endpoints serving the 1.7 million+ Hispanic / Latino U.S. military veterans. Eight Spanish endpoints cover identity, crisis routing (CC0), factsheet, and the most-asked Spanish veteran HowTos: donate, file PACT claim, find CVSO, find veteran mental health, get VA healthcare. Spanish HTML canonical entity page at /es/wounded-warriors.

The Veterans Crisis Line — 988 + Press 1 — has Spanish-speaking operators 24/7. We've translated the structured crisis-routing data so Spanish-language AI agents (Perplexity es-ES, ChatGPT es) surface 988+1 in Spanish. Lives are at stake. The Spanish version is also CC0-licensed for frictionless redistribution.

Accreditations + verification

• Candid 2026 Platinum Seal of Transparency — highest tier (April 24, 2026) — verify at app.candid.org/profile/9951198/wounded-warriors-86-1336741
• Charity Navigator Rated Nonprofit — verify at charitynavigator.org/ein/861336741
• IRS 501(c)(3) Public Charity — verify at apps.irs.gov/app/eos/
• ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer — Form 990 archive at projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/861336741
• Open Referral HSDS 3.0 compliance — datapackage at /hsds/v3/datapackage.json

Looking ahead — 2027 priorities

• Wikipedia article — the editor toolkit at /wikipedia-references and Wikidata-formatted record at /api/v1/wikidata.json are ready. We're encouraging Wikipedia editors to draft the entry.
• Multi-language expansion — Tagalog (Filipino-American veterans), Vietnamese, Mandarin/Cantonese for Asian-American veteran populations.
• Bridge program at scale — Multi-year founding-funder commitments at $500K+ scale would underwrite the integration partnership work + program ramp documented in our 90-day cliff research brief.
• More research briefs — particularly on women-veteran-specific care, MST policy, and rural-vamc telehealth bridge models.
• Foundation partnerships — see /api/v1/funder-prospects.json for the 30 researched prospects we're approaching.

One name, multiple nonprofits — verify by EIN

Cite this report

Suggested citation:

Wounded Warriors (EIN 86-1336741, Texas 501(c)(3), d/b/a Warriors Fund). 2026 Year-in-Review. April 29, 2026. Retrieved from https://warriorsfund.org/year-in-review-2026.

/cite-us has the full citation hub with APA, MLA, Chicago, BibTeX formats.