Oh, brother. Looks like the National Organization for Marriage is looking to line its coffers for next year’s fight against us homo-marriage supporters, and our girlfriends over at Unicorn Booty have republished their rather frantic end-of-year call for donations.
In it, NOM President Brian Brown (right) calls us gays “increasingly virulent.”We prefer the phrase “fiercer by the second,” but we’ll take the compliment!
Here’s a tasty sample of their shakedown letter:
As 2011 draws to a close, everyone at the National Organization for Marriage is excited about the election year ahead, which we believe will be full of huge victories for traditional marriage.
But unless we raise additional funds quickly, we will be faced with hard decisions about where to begin scaling back our efforts for next year. NOM does not have the resources to accomplish everything we need to do…and with the many new and critical marriage battles upcoming in 2012, this is the exact wrong time for us to have to scale back.
Friend, will you make one emergency year-end gift of $25, $50, $100 or even $1,000 if you can afford it, to NOM right now to help us eliminate our budget shortfall before the end of the year?
Here’s the thing about NOM’s funding: they make a point of appearing “grassroots,” but the financial records on the books suggest that the vast majority of its funds come from wealthy anonymous donors, not Joe Plumbers with $25 to spare.
The Washington Independent reported that, in 2009, NOM’s IRS forms showed that 75% of its $7 million budget came from only five sources, with three donations topping $1 million. In 2010, their financial reporting got even shadier, and more reliant on big-spending donors. (Since these donations are not tax-deductible, NOM doesn’t have disclose their identity to the IRS.)
Knowing that, it’s probably less a matter of NOM being broke and more a matter of looking earnest and all-American. They’re trying to appear like they actually rely on these small donations, which wouldn’t cover the cost of their mailings.
Buuuuut, if NOM is really broke, they should cut costs for in New Year by firing the blogger, who posted this anti-lesbian, Islamophobic, gun-toting “Twelve Days of Christmas” video on their daily feed. Not because it didn’t play to their gay-hating, religion-reductivist audience. Because the video totally lacked any element of racism!
Gotta cover all your hateful bases, NOM.
dvlaries
Doesn’t look like they’re so broke Brian is skipping meals for ‘the cause.’
Robert in NYC
Apparently, under section 501(c)4 which applies to NOM, a non-profit, it’s supposed to disclose larger amounts above $5000 by businesses and $1000 or more by individuals I believe. If as this article says it doesn’t have to disclose who contributed those amounts, then it makes no sense to disclose to the IRS. Why would it want to know how much but not who contributed? What would be the point? I think Queerty has this wrong. If the IRS mandates disclosure of the amounts, it would need to know who contributed.
I once worked for many years in a nonprofit organization in it’s accounting department and it had to disclose all of it’s donors who contributed more than $5000 as well as provide names, addresses and phone numbers when filing its 990 annual returns.
Andy
Is 2012 the year BB will be caught bbing? There’s still two weeks though.
takakupo
Are donations to NOM really tax deductible? Cause I see an inherently bourgeois flaw in that >:|