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Jesus Didn’t Teach Hate, But the Group Behind the ‘He Gets Us’ Super Bowl Ads Funds It
Over the last five years the Servant Foundation has become the main identifiable source of funding for Alliance Defending Freedom, described as an anti-LGBTIQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Feb 13, 2024
A U.S. nonprofit that aired two ads during Sunday’s Super Bowl attempting to rebrand Jesus for Gen Z is also the main funder of a designated hate group opposing abortion and LGBTIQ rights, openDemocracy can reveal.
The Servant Foundation has plunged millions of dollars into its “He Gets Us” ads, which paint Jesus as an “influencer” who was “cancelled” for standing up for his beliefs. The controversial adverts were shown at the Super Bowl for the second year running and have been plastered across billboards in the United States over the last year.
But analysis of financial accounts by openDemocracy shows over the last five years the Servant Foundation has also grown to become the main identifiable source of funding for Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), described as an anti-LGBTIQ hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)—an allegation it denies.
In total Servant gave the group $65.9 million from 2018 to 2021—an average of more than $16 million a year. As a result, ADF’s grant income rose from $55 million in 2017 to $96.8 million in 2021.
Servant’s boom coincides with its split from the National Christian Foundation (NCF), of which it was an affiliate from its launch in 2000 through to 2017. During this time, it would hand out an average $1.3 million a year and receive around $4 million. But after the split with NCF, Servant pocketed more than $1 billion in contributions—a large chunk of which actually came from the NCF.
NCF and Servant Foundation are among 12 DAF operators that from 2017 to 2020 gave $272 million to 36 American groups that work to restrict the rights of women and LGBTIQ people in the U.S. and abroad.
The NCF is considered the biggest U.S. charity for Christian causes and has been accused of channeling millions of dollars to hate groups. Almost immediately after the split with Servant, it gave the group $307 million, followed by another $11 million in 2019. It also received more than $222 million from Servant between 2018 and 2021, showing a mutual flow of money that, according to experts, “adds a layer of secrecy” to donations they make on behalf of clients.
This type of money transfer from one donor-advised fund (DAF) operator to another grew by 409% between 2015 and 2019, and hit $1 billion only in 2019, according to an analysis by the Institute for Policy Studies published in 2021. That study only focused on the biggest commercial DAF operatorsthose nonprofit branches of financial companies, thus excluding DAF operators like Servant and NCF.
“Wealthy people give to intermediaries, such as private foundations and DAF operators, which in 2021 received almost a third of all donations,” Chuck Collins, director for the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, told openDemocracy. “When these donor-controlled intermediaries pass money back and forth, they can add layers of secrecy so the public doesn’t know where the funds are ending up.”
Stephanie Peng, research manager with the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy (NCRP), which supports marginalized communities, told openDemocracy: “Anonymity is really dangerous, because you don’t know who is really behind all that money; who is controlling massive, massive amounts of money; and necessarily where that funding is going.”
The Servant Foundation was set up in Kansas by evangelical lawyer Bill High. Its partnership with the NCF included the NCF performing “accounting and other back-room tasks” for Servant. High ended the relationship in 2017, reportedly to offer lower fees to clients, and also changed Servant’s public-facing name to The Signatry.
Servant made headlines with its Super Bowl ads, which were part of the $300 million He Gets Us campaign hoping to fuel conservative evangelical goals.
NCF and Servant Foundation are among 12 DAF operators that from 2017 to 2020 gave $272 million to 36 American groups that work to restrict the rights of women and LGBTIQ people in the U.S. and abroad, an openDemocracy investigation revealed earlier this year. Servant donated a fifth of that sum and the NCF almost a half.
Hobby Lobby Money
By the time Servant split from the NCF, High had forged a crucial relationship with David Green, until then a substantial client of NCF whose retail giant Hobby Lobby plays a prominent role in battles against sexual and reproductive rights.
In 2014, Hobby Lobby won a big case when the Supreme Court ruled that corporations could deny contraception coverage under their workers’ health insurance policies, if doing so would violate their “sincerely held religious beliefs.” The NCF had given millions of dollars to the law groups litigating this case—ADF and the Becket Fund for Religious Liberty, a law firm that has represented the Greens since 2012.
High, who retired as Servant CEO in January, and Green have co-authored several books about Christian charitable giving. Green also appeared in a 2020 promotional video for Servant.
Among other beneficiaries of money channeled through Servant are at least seven U.S. organizations well-known for their attacks against equal rights: ADF, the Fellowship Foundation, Focus on the Family, American Center for Law and Justice, Family Research Council, Heartbeat International, and the Heritage Foundation.
Analysis of donation flows suggests cash from Green that once moved through the NCF could now be getting channeled through Servant. Since 2018, Servant has given big money to two groups focused on international evangelism and distribution of Christian literature that are also listed on the Hobby Lobby donation webpage. They rank second and third in money received from Servant from 2018 to 2021—Every Home for Christ ($181 million) and OneHope ($107 million). Meanwhile, the NCF, which had given $47 million to Every Home for Christ and $25 million to OneHope in 2017, has drastically reduced its contributions to these organizations since then. Green was also reportedly a major donor for the He Gets Us campaign. Both Hobby Lobby and Green did not respond to questions about whether they had stopped donating cash via the NCF and instead donated it via Servant.
The Museum of the Bible, founded by the Green family in 2017 at a cost of $500 million—and marred by scandals for buying looted and smuggled archaeological artifacts and exhibiting “modern forgeries” of Dead Sea Scroll fragments—is another big grantee of the Servant Foundation. It was given more than $3.2 million between 2018 and 2021 and before that had received hundreds of millions from the NCF since 2013.
Funding Hate and Misinformation
Among other beneficiaries of money channeled through Servant are at least seven U.S. organizations well-known for their attacks against equal rights: ADF, the Fellowship Foundation, Focus on the Family, American Center for Law and Justice, Family Research Council, Heartbeat International, and the Heritage Foundation.
ADF won a Supreme Court case this year that allows businesses to discriminate against gay couples on free speech grounds, and was one of the groups that masterminded the strategy to overturn the constitutionally protected right to abortion in the U.S. It has defended the sterilization of trans people in Europe and fought the decriminalization of gay sex in Belize. It also launched efforts to ban transgender students’ access to bathrooms and locker rooms consistent with their gender identity.
Also a SPLC-designated hate group, Family Research Council makes false claims about LGBTIQ people, and has been involved in funding and promoting harmful conversion therapies against LGBTIQ people, as well as opposing U.S. local bans to these activities.
The exchange of money between DAF operators as Servant and NCF is a model extending internationally.
In 2021, openDemocracyrevealed how Focus on the Family, another organization funded by Servant, had platforms for the provision of conversion therapies in the U.S. and Costa Rica.
openDemocracy requested interviews with all the organizations and individuals named in this investigation. Only the NCF answered through a short written statement signed by its communications vice president, Steve Chapman.
“The NCF does not develop or implement strategies about which charities or causes to support [and] does not rely on third-party designations or labels in our grantmaking process,” Chapman said. “All grants are initiated by the recommendations of our givers.”
In the statement, the DAF operator claimed to serve “over 25,000 givers that use Giving Funds [donor-advised funds] to individually support their favorite causes and charities,” and to have given more than $14 billion since 1982 to more than 70,000 charities that “are providing clean water to the thirsty, rescuing victims of human trafficking, translating the Bible into new languages, and much more.”
A Global Model
The exchange of money between DAF operators as Servant and NCF is a model extending internationally. The NCF, for example, partnered with TrustBridge Global, a charitable giving vehicle that declares itself as the first truly global DAF operator. Registered in 2016 in Florida and Switzerland, its CEO is a former NCF employee. TrustBridge has set up affiliate foundations around the world and claims to have 70,000 nonprofits vetted to receive DAFs. The list includes the ADF branch in the U.K. TrustBridge has also received millions of dollars from Servant.
Servant presents itself as a “global community” that has given $4 billion in “transformational grants for nonprofits around the world,” and supports projects in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The fund also claims to have given $2 million in 150 grants for emergency relief in Ukraine, and over $1 million “for supporting missionaries around the globe, fueling the spread of the gospel in at least 43 countries,” especially in Africa.
Its website says it gave out over $470 million in grants in 2021, while receiving $899 million in contributions. As a DAF operator, it is able to accept other assets beyond cash, such as property, cryptocurrency, stocks, and mutual funds, as well as life insurance payouts.
“We want donors to be accountable to who they’re giving money to.”
When clients “give” assets other than money to these funds, they can write off the total amount the gifts are worth. This way, donors can bypass capital gains taxes from these gifts, which they would have to pay if they converted them into cash holdings.
Some DAF operators even have estate-planning options to bypass estate taxes and continue charitable giving after a donor dies.
For the NCRP, this is troubling.
“We want donors to be accountable to who they’re giving money to. So if donors are putting all of this money into a DAF, but that money sits there for years and years, and there are no beneficiaries, if the donor made a commitment and that commitment doesn’t make its way down to the recipient organisation, then that’s a problem,” NCRP’s Stephanie Peng said.
Legislative efforts to establish “reasonable timeframes” for paying out assets have so far failed.
High, Servant’s founder, has argued against any effort to make DAFs more accountable. “A hallmark of American charity has always been a right to privacy. We should not take away that privacy right. On the contrary, donor-advised funds have done much to democratize giving, as witnessed by their rapid rise,” he wrote in a Forbes article.
His foundation continues to court new donors. Its website even has a calculator for prospective customers to see how much in taxes they could save by donating.
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'Wildest Dreams': MAGA Movement Melts Down Over Taylor Swift and Joe Biden
From Charlie Kirk to Vivek Ramaswamy, right-wingers are publicly panicking that the pop star may endorse the Democratic president.
Jan 30, 2024
Perhaps to distract from former U.S. President Donald Trump's 91 felony charges or the unpopularity of GOP policies, or simply fearful of Taylor Swift's deeply dedicated fanbase, right-wing public figures are ramping up attacks on the music industry giant amid speculation that she may endorse Democratic President Joe Biden for reelection.
Reporting Monday on the president's "anti-Trump battle plan," The New York Timesdetailed that "Biden aides are drafting wish lists of potential surrogates, including elected officials, social media influencers, and the endorsement of their wildest dreams: the global superstar."
A day earlier, Swift attended the game in which her pro-Bud Light and Pfizer Covid-19 vaccine boyfriend, Travis Kelce, helped the Kansas City Chiefs advance to Super Bowl LVIII—after which, as Rolling Stonenoted Monday, "long-standing conspiracy theories around the NFL's 'scriptwriting' for football seasons clashed with right-wing conspiracy theorists claiming Swift's involvement with Kelce is part of a deep state plot to gin up support" for Biden, whom the pop star endorsed in 2020.
Because of Swift and Kelce, some Republicans prepping for the professional football season's finale next month are "now rooting for a team from the city they portray as a modern Sodom and Gomorrah: San Francisco," Politicopointed out Tuesday.
As Rolling Stone reported:
Far-right influencer Rogan O'Handley went so far as to suggest that if the Chiefs won the Super Bowl, Swift and Kelce would trigger an apocalyptic chain of events that would kill millions. "You MUST defeat the Chiefs," O'Handley wrote in an X post addressed to the San Francisco 49ers. "If you don't, Mr. Pfizer and his girlfriend are going to tour the country as 'world champions' helping elect Joe Biden WW3 will likely follow in a 2nd Biden term and millions will die. The fate of the free world rests upon your shoulders."
Former Republican Illinois congressional candidate Jack Lombardi II similarly said in a series of social media posts following the Chiefs and 49ers games that "I have never been more convinced that the Super Bowl is rigged" and "Taylor Swift is nothing more than a controlled influencer who has been put to work by those who seek to destroy America."
Responding on Monday to a social media post from far-right commentator Jack Posobiec, former Republican presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy—who earlier this month dropped out of the race and endorsed Trump—also suggested that the Super Bowl will be rigged for the Chiefs and predicted a forthcoming Biden endorsement from the power couple.
Semafor's David Weigel shared on social media multiple examples of right-wingers melting down over the pop star and the president during Turning Point Action's Restoring National Confidence Summit in Las Vegas on Monday and Tuesday.
According to Weigel, Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk warned of Swift's possible Biden endorsement, saying: "That will be a tsunami that will be very difficult to thwart... We better be prepared. It seems as though things are aligning for that."
A Tuesday video shows Posobiec highlighting Swift's history of boosting voter registrations. On National Voting Day last September, Swift took to Instagram, encouraging Americans to "raise your voices" and register through the nonprofit Vote.org, which said her post was followed by over 35,000 registrations.
Posobiec also directed conference attendees to Swift's 2020 support for Biden and her first overtly political comments in 2018, when she posted on Instagram that she would be voting for Democratic congressional candidates in Tennessee and condemned Marsha Blackburn, a Republican who was ultimately elected to the U.S. Senate.
A 2020 documentary about Swift, Miss Americana, features a discussion preceding that post. In the film, Swift makes her opposition to Trump clear and expresses regret that she didn't speak out against the ex-president during the 2016 cycle.
Trump's campaign on Tuesday dismissed the anticipated impact of Swift weighing in on November's election, with senior adviser Jason Miller tellingRolling Stone that "Joe Biden might be counting on Taylor Swift to save him, but voters are looking at these sky-high inflation rates and saying, 'We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together.'" However, Swift's star power has reportedly frustrated the former president.
Along with pointing to "members of MAGAland's upper crust... plotting to declare—as one source close to Donald Trump calls it—a 'holy war' on the pop megastar," the outlet cites unnamed sources who said the GOP front-runner has "privately claimed that he is 'more popular' than Swift is and that he has more committed fans than she does" as well as "commented to some confidants that it 'obviously' made no sense that he was not named Time magazine's 2023 Person of the Year."
Meanwhile, "the Biden crew and its alumni network have watched it all with eye rolls and a touch of mockery," and worked with celebrities regularly involved in Democratic politics, like Sophia Bush and Kerry Washington, according to Politico's "West Wing Playbook."
The newsletter added that "as much as the Swift-Kelce drama says about our politics, it may say more about our culture—in particular, the reaction to a powerful woman finding her way into the spotlight reserved for the ultimate male sport."
As Media Matters for America laid out in a roundup late last year, "right-wing media spent 2023 lobbing sexist attacks" at Swift, painting her as "a fake Christian, a Democratic agent, and possibly a witch" who is "ruining football by dating an NFL player."
Continuing the trend in the new year, Fox News' Jesse Watters claimed earlier this month that "around four years ago, the Pentagon's psychological operations unit floated turning Taylor Swift into an asset."
Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh responded with a reference to one of her songs, saying that "as for this conspiracy theory, we are going to shake it off."
Despite that statement and even some conservatives pleading for their ideological allies to "STOP BEING NUTS," right-wing commentator Benny Johnson shared a nearly 42-minute video on social media Monday, writing: "It's All FAKE. Taylor Swift EXPOSED as a FED OP To RIG 2024 Election for Biden | Pentagon ADMITS It."
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