Fraternal year Money donated Volunteer hours2026$200 million48 million2024$190 million47 million2023$185 million49 million2022$154 million47+ million2019$185 million76 million2015$175+ million73.5+ million2013$167.5+ million70+ million1982$41.7 million10.4 million
The charitable activities of the Knights of Columbus include the time and money which are donated to charitable causes by the Supreme, state, and local councils of the Order of the Knights of Columbus. Charity is the foremost principle of the Knights of Columbus. At its 2019 convention, the supreme knight reported the Knights had donated $185 million and 76 million volunteer hours to charitable projects the previous year.
United in Charity, a general, unrestricted endowment fund, was introduced at the 2004 Supreme Council meeting to support and ensure the overall long-term charitable and philanthropic goals of the order. The fund is wholly managed, maintained, and operated by Knights of Columbus Charities, Inc., a 501(c)(8) charitable organization. Before United in Charity was formed, all requests for funds were met with the general funds of the order or in combination with specific appeals.
The reach and ability to give large sums of money has caused some to worry that it can influence the ecclesiology and governance of the church itself.
Employment
At its 1897 convention, Supreme Knight John J. Phelan spoke of the need to assist fellow knights who were in distress as a result of the economic depression in the United States. This led to the establishment of charitable funds within local councils. During the early 20th century, local councils often functioned as agencies for social welfare to support Catholics. Councils occasionally established unemployment bureaus to find jobs for Catholics (including non-members).
When Supreme Knight Martin Carmody assumed office in 1927, on the eve of the Great Depression in the United States, he urged knights to cherish the virtue of charity. When President Herbert Hoover established the President's Organization for Unemployment Relief in 1931, Carmody wrote to him pledging the services of the Order. Carmody had already encouraged the 2,600 councils to have "strong and active employment committees." Some, such as the 20 councils in Saint Louis, joined together to establish full-time employment agencies throughout the 1920s.
The Order also established a Bureau of Employment at their headquarters in New Haven to coordinate efforts among councils. Peter Collins, who ran the effort for returning servicemen after World War I, ran the new Bureau. By the end of July 1931, a total a 43,128 unemployed people had been placed into jobs. In less than two years, the Order would provide more than 100,000 jobs. In October of that year, Hoover appointed Carmody to the Organization.
People with disabilities
The Knights have a tradition of supporting those with physical and developmental disabilities. Charles P. Greco was largely responsible for engagement of the Order in this area. One of the largest recipients has been the Special Olympics. The Order's support goes back to the first games in 1968.
Disaster relief
Giving to those in need of natural disasters dates back to the earliest days of the Order. After a flood in Kansas in 1903, the Order raised US$5,000 to be distributed to parishes and local councils, and it collected over US$100,000 after the 1906 San Francisco earthquake. In 1927, the order gave US$50,000 for flood relief.
The Knights of Columbus also gave significant charitable contributions to the people of Haiti in the aftermath of the earthquake in 2010. The order also donated 1,000 wheelchairs to the people of Haiti in partnership with the Global Wheelchair Mission. The Knights also partnered with Project Medishare for an initiative entitled, "Healing Haiti's Children." The initiative, backed by a more than US$2.5 million commitment from the Knights of Columbus provided free prosthetic limbs and a minimum of two years of rehab to every child.
In 2015, the order donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to victims of typhoons and other natural disasters.
Housing
In 1967, the Massachusetts State Council voted to establish a non-profit corporation to construct affordable housing. The Boston Redevelopment Authority selected the Knights to develop a parcel, but the Supreme Council did not like the idea. The Massachusetts State Council constructed Christopher Columbus Waterfront Park in Boston's North End instead.
The Order donates money and volunteer hours to Habitat for Humanity.
Coats for Kids In 2009, the Order began giving winter jackets to needy children through its Coats for Kids program. As of 2023, they had donated more than 1 million coats. Baseball pitcher Ty Blach supports the program and participated along with Patrick Kelly at a ceremony in Denver, Colorado to mark the 1 millionth donation; in this ceremony, they also made $10,000 donations to five local Catholic schools.
Health initiatives
The Order set up its first national blood drive in 1938.
The Knights believe that showing pregnant women ultrasound images of their fetuses will make them less likely to go through with an abortion; by 2019, they had donated over 1,000 machines to centers throughout the United States and Canada.
Following the United States Supreme Court decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, Supreme Knight Patrick Kelly called on the order to increase their support for women facing unplanned and crisis pregnancies with the Aid and Support After Pregnancy (ASAP) initiative. Whenever a local council donates to a pregnancy center or maternity home, the Supreme Council will make a matching donation of 20%. They set an initial goal of $5 million for the first year of the program.
Refugees Middle East Between 2014 and 2018, the Knights gave more than $20 million to provide food, shelter, clothing, and medical care to persecuted Christians and other religious minorities in the Middle East.
At a Solidarity Dinner for the Washington-based group In Defense of Christians, Vice President Mike Pence singled out the order for their "extraordinary work caring for the persecuted around the world." Between 2014 and 2017, the Knights of Columbus Christian Refugee Relief Fund gave over $17 million for humanitarian relief work in the area. That includes $2 million to rebuild the primarily Christian town of Karamles in Iraq.
At the end of 2017, the Knights and the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops recognized a "Week of Awareness" for persecuted Christians. In 2018, a national awareness campaign was launched by the Knights to bring greater public awareness to the plight of Christians in the Middle East. In 2017, the Knights praised the decision of the US government to provide direct US aid to persecuted Christians in the Middle East who were suffering at the hands of the Islamic State. They also led the effort to get the United States Department of State to declare the atrocities a genocide.
Latin Americans The Knights donated $250,000 in 2018 to help refugees crossing over the Mexico–United States border who were seeking asylum in the United States. At the Supreme Convention, Anderson announced that they were prepared to expand the program to aid those in refugee camps in every state along the border.
Ukraine In the aftermath of the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, the 2,000 Knights of Columbus in the country worked to help those impacted. Within days of the invasion, leaders of the Knights met with Mieczysław Mokrzycki, the Latin-rite archbishop of Lviv, and Sviatoslav Shevchuk, the Major Archbishop of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, and created the Anti-Crisis Committee to better coordinate relief efforts. They began by providing food and clothing to those at train and bus stations in Lviv who were fleeing into Poland. They then began organizing busses to take people the Polish border.
Once in Poland, knights in that country established a Mercy Center to welcome refugees and provide additional aid. In the first three months of the war, the Knights in Poland helped more than 300,000 people, or 10% of those who fled to that country. Polish knights also organized relief boxes of supplies, donated by knights from around the world, to ship back into Ukraine to help those who remained. Convoys of supplies cross the border into war zones once or twice a week.
Aid is provided according to need and without regard to the religion of the recipients. The name of the Knights work in Ukraine is the Ukraine Solidarity Fund, which had raised $20 million as of early 2023. By the end of 2023, the Order had served over 1.4 million Ukrainians. More than 7.3 million pounds of humanitarian supplies had been donated, along with 250,000 care packages and 400 wheelchairs.
State Deputy Youriy Maletskiy was awarded the St. Michael Award at the 2022 Supreme Convention for the work he had done and was doing to help civilian refugees and others in the country. The award is given to those who provide exemplary service to the Order and the Church. The Knights released a film, "In Solidarity with Ukraine", in February 2023. The 60-minute documentary details the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine primarily through interviews with many Ukrainians.
In December 2023, Russia banned the Knights of Columbus, along with the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church and other Catholic organizations in occupied areas of Ukraine's Zaporizhzhia region. Russia claimed the Knights were "associated with the intelligence services of the United States and the Vatican."
Vatican initiatives
In 1965, the Knights donated the land in Rome for the building of the Paul VI Audience Hall. The Vicarius Christi Fund has an endowment of US$20 million. Since its establishment in 1981, the fund has generated over $57 million for the Pope's personal charities. The funds are invested in loans to churches.
The Vox Clara Committee received $100,000 in support of its efforts to translate liturgical texts.
Bishops' conferences and church facilities
The Knights give to individual churches and diocese, but is also a major donor to the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. They have spent more than $1.4 million between 2010 and 2014 to provide workshops for the bishops coordinated by the National Catholic Bioethics Center. Since 1977, the order has provided funding to the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops.
In 1979, a US$500,000 memorial fund was set up to support the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington. The Order also operates the Saint John Paul II National Shrine. A further $20 million went to church facilities and $7.4 million to Catholic schools from state and local councils.
Education initiatives
Catholic University of America
In the early years of the Order, educational activities were limited to things like establishing scholarships to local institutions, placing books in libraries, holding public lectures, and similar activities. In 1904, in the first national response to a call from the American Church, the Order presented a check for over $50,000 to The Catholic University of America to establish a chair of American history. In the years following this initial gift, an additional $500,000 was raised to establish 50 scholarships at the university. Originally there was to be one fellowship for every $10,000, with preference going to Knights or their families.By 1922, 146 K. of C. Fellowships had been awarded.
Post–World War I efforts