UPDATE: For post-election summary information, please see this link.
At 40%, Mormon donations make up largest group of donors to Prop. 8
- Individual Donors, Mormon - 40.40% ($7,615,842.43)
- Individual Donors, Other* - 29.94% ($5,643,497.71)
- Non-Mormon Organizations - 29.66% ($5,592,015.24)
*Includes “probable” Mormons not yet confirmed.
That is the breakdown of donations as of 9:15 pm Pacific Time on September 28th.
Non-LDS Organizational Donors break down as follows (percentages are the portion of their nearly $5.6 million total donations):
- National Organization for Marriage, CA - 26% ($1.4 million)
- Knights of Columbus - 18% ($1 million)
- Fieldstead & Co. - 16% ($900,000)
- Elsa Prince - 12% ($650,000)
- American Family Association - 9% ($500,000)
- Focus on the Family - 8% ($441,364)
- Concerned Women for America - 7% ($409,000)
- Other organizations - 4% ($250,517)
Who are these other large donors?
National Organization for Marriage (www.nationformarriage.org), Maggie Gallagher, President
NOM (a 501(c)4 organization) was founded in response to the growing need for an organized opposition to same-sex marriage in state legislatures, NOM serves as a national resource for marriage-related initiatives at the state and local level. NOM works to develop political messaging, build its national grassroots email database of voters, and provide political intelligence and donor infrastructure on the state level, with a focus on developing new strategies for increasing influence in the Northeast and West Coast, where marriage is most under threat. NOM has created a list of talking points about Same-sex Marriage.
Knights of Columbus (www.kofc.org)
The Connecticut state legislature officially chartered the Knights of Columbus as a fraternal benefit society on March 29, 1882. The Order is still true to its founding principles of charity, unity and fraternity. The Knights was formed to render financial aid to members and their families. Mutual aid and assistance are offered to sick, disabled and needy members and their families. Social and intellectual fellowship is promoted among members and their families through educational, charitable, religious, social welfare, war relief and public relief works. The results of the Order’s annual Survey of Fraternal Activity for the year ending Dec. 31, 2006, show that total contributions to charity at all levels reached $143,816,004 – exceeding the previous year’s total by more than $4 million.
Knights of Columbus spokesman Patrick Korten said that the million dollar donation from the Knights “is both an indication of how important we believe this referendum to be, and an encouragement to other groups and individuals of all faiths to lend their support as well.” He noted that “From the day we were founded 126 years ago, strengthening and protecting the family has always been central to the mission of the Knights of Columbus. Preserving marriage as the indispensable institution in which children are conceived, born and raised to adulthood by a loving father and mother is vital to a healthy society. It is also the most favorable environment in which to protect the rights and best interests of children. We are proud to join the Catholic bishops and priests of California, and so many other people of good will, in this effort, on which so much depends.”
Fieldstead & Co.
A Wikipedia Article includes the following about this organization: Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Jr (born 1950) is an heir of the Home Savings bank fortune built by his father, Howard Fieldstead Ahmanson, Sr. Ahmanson Jr. is a multi-millionaire philanthropist and financier of the causes of many conservative Christian cultural, religious and political organizations. Howard and Roberta Ahmansons’ personal philanthropic organization is Fieldstead and Company, AKA the Fieldstead Institute, an unincorporated entity which has never had an online presence or telephone number. Fieldstead’s Senior Program Officer is Steven Ferguson, an expert in public policy funding and a member-at-large of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies (OCMS). OCMS is part of the International Fellowship of Evangelical Mission Theologians network (INFEMIT), which previously shared its address with the Ethics and Public Policy Institute. Ahmanson has been the major funder for the Capitol Resource Institute, the California political front of Focus on the Family; the Western Center for Law and Religious Freedom, and the California Pro-Life Council.
Elsa Prince
According to this site Elsa Prince is the mother of Betsy DeVos and Blackwater founder Erik Prince, as well as Emilie Weirda. She has generously funded the religious right through the Edgar and Elsa Prince Foundation. In 2004 she was the top individual contributor to Citizens for the Protection of Marriage, contributing $75,000 to the campaign to ban same-sex marriage in Michigan. Elsa’s husband, Edgar Prince co-founded the Family Research Council.
American Family Association (www.afa.net), Donald Wildmon, Chair.
AFA (a 501(c)3 organization) represents and stands for traditional family values, focusing primarily on the influence of television and other media – including pornography – on our society. Wildmon is an ordained United Methodist minister who founded the National Federation for Decency in 1977. That organization became the AFA in 1988. The American Family Association believes that God has communicated absolute truth to man through the Bible, and that all men everywhere at all times are subject to the authority of God’s Word. Therefore, a culture based on Biblical truth best serves the well-being of our country, in accordance with the vision of our founding fathers.
The AFA sees fights cultural wars on the following battlefronts: Preservation of Marriage and the Family; Decency and Morality; Sanctity of Human Life; Stewardship; and Media Integrity. AFA regularly sends out Action Alerts in addition to its AFA Journal to encourage support of its positions and to encourage voters and citizens to take action in pressuring advertisers, businesses and politicians.
Concerned Women for America (www.cwfa.org), Beverly LaHaye, founder; Wendy Wright, President
The mission of CWA is to protect and promote Biblical values among all citizens - first through prayer, then education, and finally by influencing our society - thereby reversing the decline in moral values in our nation. The vision of CWA is for women and like-minded men, from all walks of life, to come together and restore the family to its traditional purpose and thereby allow each member of the family to realize their God-given potential and be more responsible citizens.
CWA focuses its work on six core issues: Family (one man and one woman); Sanctity of Human Life (protect innocent life from conception to natural death); Education (return authority to parents); Pornography (fight all pornography and obscenity); Religious Liberty (supports individuals to pray, worship and express beliefs without fear of discrimination or persecution); and National Sovereignty (UN shouldn’t have authority in US and US has right and duty to protect national borders).
Please note: Comments discussing the data and interpretation of same are welcome, but comments debating the issues or discussing the righteousness (or lack thereof) of people on either side will be deleted.
11 comments ↓
So let me get this straight. As of Sept. 22 there were 3,817 total donors of $1000 or more. That means that based on your “data” if every single one of those donors were mormon, which you have already conceded is not the case, then approximately .5 % of the 770,000 mormons in California have made a large donation towards prop 8. That doesn’t sound like “most” mormons have donated. It doesn’t even sound like “many” mormons have donated. Maybe you should take a look at your assumptions on your home page. Since you really have no way of gauging what percentage of mormons are actually going out and actively campaigning, I don’t think you have any grounds whatsoever for your statements that “many if not most mormons are involved in the campaign.” Especially, considering that not even .5% have donated.
That’s like saying that many if not most of the Hollywood Elites are donating to anti-8 organizations because Brad Pitt and Steven Spielberg donated large amounts.
Your data seems to indicate that alot of the money being donated to yes on prop 8 is coming from religious individuals and organizations that care deeply about promoting traditional family values.
I would guess that alot of the money being donated to no on prop 8 might be coming from homosexual individuals or organizations that are interested in promoting gay marriage.
That is pretty shocking information.
I don’t think they are trying to say that most Mormons have donated or that most, if not all, Mormons in California are actively involved in campaigning for Prop 8. But the fact that approximately 40% of total donations came from Mormons is significant because they make up a very small percentage of Californians as a whole. And that’s real data, not “data.” Susan, why are you trying to create a controversy where there’s not one? And your guess that much of the money going toward no on Prop 8 comes from LGBTs or gay rights groups? Well, duh! It’s their rights that are on the line here, not yours. If someone were trying to take away my right to vote because I’m a woman, you can damn well bet I would be actively fighting for my civil rights.
Well, technically, the 770,000 number is a bit misleading, because if you know anything about the LDS church, you know that only about half the people listed on the rosters actually attend church at least once a month. So, that cuts the pool of available donors/volunteers to 385,000.
Now, take into consideration that half of those folks are children or teens too young to donate/volunteer. So, now the available pool comes down to 192,500 adults. If one-third of those folks are elderly and on fixed incomes and unlikely to be healthy enough to donate or volunteer, that cuts the potential pool to around 128,300.
If the example of a local ward is worth anything, only half the members were actually registered to vote two weeks ago. So if you’re talking about people who actually have a voice in past elections, the pool of influence dwindled again.
So, does sound better to say that most of the 64,150 registered Mormon voters have been volunteering and donating time and money to change California’s constitution? If 770,000 represents just 2% of California’s population, 64,000 is much less than 1%.
There are more gay people in California than there are active Mormons, and probably even more than all the Mormons of record, as well. Does it make sense for such a small minority to have such influence over another, larger minority?
Two more thoughts - in the Prop 22 campaign, more than half of the donations came from donors who sent small donations ($100-$999). Those donors have not even been scratched by this site yet, since that information has yet to be reported by the California Secretary of State.
Finally - even in my fairly liberal stake, of the people who attend church regularly, more than half are contributing either time or money to the campaign. So, in my neck of the woods, it’s accurate to say most Mormons are donating.
And one more thing, in my stake, the ONLY people who have donated $1,000 or more are Mormons.
That, in and of itself, is interesting, if not newsworthy.
I’ll even go out on a limb and say that if we could see the smaller donations now, there’d be more donors from my stake and they’d easily be responsible for more than half the money in that donation pile as well.
The data on this website pertains only to people who have donated $1000 or more. These larger donations must be reported immediately. Smaller donations are reported on a delayed basis. As a result, the number of Mormon donors may be larger than Susan estimated, particularly if the number of people who could afford say $100 or $250 is larger than the number who could afford $1000 or more.
What I find interesting is that nearly all of the donations identified as being from Mormons were made AFTER the First Presidency letter at the end of June. If all of these folks were all that fired up of their own volition to pass 8, why wait for a letter from the First Presidency. As documented in the Wall Street Journal, a well organized effort was conducted from church headquarters to identify wealthy donors and hook them into conference calls with GAs.
The former COO of Clorox told the WSJ that he had initially written a check for $3000. Then a conference call from a GA was made and the GA suggested that $25K would be a more appropriate amount, so he wrote a check for $25,000.
To suggest that all of these people donated over ten million dollars without pressure from church leadership is ludicrous.
Susan may be right in that a majority of all LDS families in California have NOT donated money, but the fact remains that 40% or more of the money has been donated by a group comprising less than 1% of the population.
ps to Susan….ever since the internet became available, I have always checked in at the California Secretary of State’s website to follow the money. I wanted to know who was backing or opposing each issue before I made my decisions.
When Knights of Columbus or Focus On The Family makes a large donation, one recognizes these names and one knows immediately what they stand for. Ten years ago, the LDS Church suffered some bad publicity when they gave 500K (out of 600K raised total) to an Alaskan effort to pass a same sex marriage ban.
That’s right, an out of state church organization gave 83% of the funds to promote a ballot measure in Alaska. While legal, the donation gave many the impression that an out of state religious entity was trying to manipulate an election in Alaska.
Having learned this lesson in Alaska, in 2002 the LDS Church asked members to donate individually. The result was that few people realized the extent of LDS Church involvement in arm twisting those donations out of the members.
Since most of the LDS donors are not celebrities, few people outside their stake would realize the extent of the church’s involvement. As a California voter, I reserve the right to know the source of all funding for state ballot measures and candidates. And when ten million dollars comes from one particular source, yes the voters have a right to know before they choose.
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