Who’s funding Moms for Liberty? It’s complicated

Those who regularly follow political news will know that as most Americans headed joyfully into the Labor Day weekend, about 600 women gathered in Washington, D.C., for the third summit held by Moms for Liberty.

Founded in Florida in 2021 by Tina Descovich, Bridget Ziegler and Tiffany Justice, the group landed on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s list of extremist organizations in 2023.

Whenever I read about extremist groups like Moms for Liberty, I always wonder where their funding comes from. Recently, I waded into some of the big dollars behind the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025. I decided to do the same with Moms for Liberty, and I sort of wish I hadn’t.

By way of analogy, I learned to crochet many years ago. There is nothing more annoying than trying to unravel a wad of knotted-up yarn. Sometimes the yard is too knotted to be worth anything and needs to be cut off. The same could be said of some of the funding entities and “nonprofits” tied to Moms for Liberty.

First, some background

Journalists have noted how rightwing media immediately propelled what otherwise would have been a small group of suburban moms into a nationwide brand. (Rush Limbaugh lived in and recorded his show from the same town as the founders.) Since its formation, Moms for Liberty has served as one of the benign faces of a network of wealthy rightwing megadonors who use parents as pawns in the ongoing culture wars and their bid for power.

Over the past year, Moms for Liberty has suffered a number of scandals including: two Kentucky chapter leaders posing for photos with the extremist group Proud Boys; an Indiana chapter proudly using (and citing) a quote from Hitler in its newsletter; and, most recently, the revelation that one of its founders, Bridget Ziegler, not only had a ménage à trois with her husband and another woman, but regularly sent her husband out to bars to prowl for women they would both be interested in.

That in and of itself is newsworthy given that Moms for Liberty — and Bridget Ziegler in particular — have been at the forefront of extremists advocating for Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill. Even more shocking is that the unnamed woman involved in the salacious tryst accused Ziegler’s husband, Christian Ziegler (then-chair of the Florida GOP) of rape, forcing Bridget Ziegler to resign her position at the rightwing organization, The Leadership Institute. She has defied calls for her to resign her seat on the Sarasota County School Board, where she has served nine years.

Needless to say, the turnout at this year’s Moms for Liberty Summit was smaller than last year’s even though the Republican nominee for president participated in a “fireside chat” onstage. As the group attempts to maintain its relevance among its target audience, it fully embraced Trump and his policies including an almost singular focus on transgender students.

Why would donors continue to be tied to this group?

Trying to untangle the mess

One would think figuring out where Moms for Liberty’s funding comes from would be relatively simple. But this group, like so many in the political space, operates more than one entity under the same name, offering a series of shell-like companies from which money can be shuffled outside of the public’s purview.

In the case of Moms for Liberty, they operate:

• “Moms for Liberty Foundation” (tax-exempt under the IRS 501c3 code with ID 87-3980061)
• “Moms for Liberty Action” (tax-exempt under the IRS 527 code with ID 87-3183915)
• “Moms for Liberty PAC” (a second tax-exempt company under IRS 527 code with ID 87-3199190)
• “Moms for Liberty Inc. Political Victory Fund” (a third tax-exempt company under the IRS 527 code with ID 87-3253069)
• “Moms for Liberty Florida Political Committee” (a fourth tax-exempt 527 company with ID 87-3982572);
• “Moms for Liberty Inc.” (tax-exempt under the 501c4 tax code with ID 85-4331724)
• “Moms for Liberty” (another tax-exempt company under the 501c4 tax code with ID 87-2306476)

Any entity operating under the IRS tax code 501c3 is considered a nonprofit and is required to make their tax filings publicly available. If a 501c3 has less than $50,000 in contributions in a given year, it can submit a simple 990 postcard to the IRS indicating so. Those entities operating under the tax codes 527 and 501c4 are also required to file with the IRS, but those filings are not required to be publicly available. Even so, many funders, when donating to these kinds of entities, list their donations on their own tax filings, making it possible to piece parts of the tangled web together.

Most of the funding for Moms for Liberty comes from individual donors and events they host, therefore the funding is untraceable.

Most of the funding for Moms for Liberty comes from individual donors and events they host, therefore the funding is untraceable. In terms of the larger funding entities connected with them, what can be discovered from the various 990s that are publicly available is the following information:

The only actual 501c3, “Moms for Liberty Foundation” (ID 87-3980061), received funding in 2023 through anonymous Donor-Advised Funds at Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift fund ($30,200), Schwab Charitable Fund ($12,825 ) and Vanguard Charitable ($6,500). In 2022, they drew the attention of Publix grocery store heiress Julie Jenkins Fancelli, a rightwing megadonor caught up in the investigation by the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the United States Capitol for her funding of the “Stop the Steal” effort intended to draw Trump supporters to the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. She donated $100,000 to the “Moms for Liberty Foundation” through her family’s foundation (George Jenkins Foundation Inc. Co LJ Management Services Inc).

One of the 501c4s, “Moms for Liberty Inc” (ID 85-4331724), has received two significant contributions from established funding entities. In 2022 it received $25,000 from the Heritage Foundation (home of the infamous Project 2025) for “civic participation.” In 2021 “Moms for Liberty Inc” received $20,000 from Diamond Mind Foundation for “parent-teacher involvement.”

Finally, the other 501c4, “Moms for Liberty” (ID 87-2306476), received $35,000 from a funding entity called Our United Voices Inc. in 2023. It is this relationship that I especially want to draw attention to, because it is emblematic of so many relationships in the swamps of far-right political funding.

Our United Voices Inc.

According to its initial (and only) 990 tax filing, Our United Voices Inc. was established in 2023 as a 501c4. The address listed on file matches property records for a home owned by Kathy Blanck, wife of Mark Campbell, who is listed as the entity’s principal officer.

On the tax filing, the officers/board of directors are:

Mark Campbell, a senior fellow staff member at the Leadership Institute (the far-right training organization involved with writing Project 2025). Campbell lives in Dallas. He was paid $300,000 by Our United Voices Inc. for serving as its CEO.

Evan Allen, Campbell’s chief of staff at the Leadership Institute. According to his LinkedIn profile, he resides in Philadelphia. He was paid $150,000 by Our United Voices Inc. for serving as its COO.

Steve Hantler, connected with the Federalist Society, the far-right legal organization responsible for supplying the Trump administration with Supreme Court justice nominees to its liking and remaking the judiciary in the United States. Hantler’s LinkedIn profile also lists him as director of The Marcus Family Office in Atlanta, home to The Marcus Foundation. These entities were founded and are managed by Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot. Hantler also is an adviser to The Gary Sinise Foundation. He lives in Atlanta.

Phil Willard, CFO and COO at Job Creator’s Network in Addison, Texas, where Willard presumably lives. JCN is another example of an entity that runs both a 501c4 (for political lobbying) and a 501c3 (under the auspices of being a nonprofit that benefits the public). Both entities were founded by Bernie Marcus, co-founder of Home Depot, to push for deregulation for businesses. In addition to his JCN salary of $292,558 for serving as its CFO/COO, Willard was paid $24,000 by Our United Voices Inc. for serving as its CFO. Willard also serves on the boards of:

• Foundation for American Content and Entertainment where, according to their most recent 990, Willard is paid $36,000 for serving as its CFO. Incidentally, Steve Hantler also is on this board and his son, Scott Hantler, serves as the foundation’s COO, earning $55,000. (According to his LinkedIn profile, Scott Hantler is listed as chief of staff for the director of policy initiatives at The Marcus Family Office, where his father works, as Millennial coalitions director for Job Creator’s Network, where Willard works, as well as the founder of Uncensored Media LLC and an adviser to Bold TV, which are both rightwing media content creation entities.
• Informing America Foundation where, according to their most recent 990, Willard is paid $102,000 for serving as its CFO. Steve Hantler also serves on this board, as does Diana Davis Spencer whose daughter, Abby Spencer Moffat, has been on the board of the Heritage Foundation since 2011. As I noted previously, the Diana Davis Spencer Foundation has more than $1.4 billion in assets and was a key funder of the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025.

There is a fifth board member listed on the tax filing for Our United Voices Inc. — Tom Davis. It is unclear who this board member actually is or where he resides.

Straw donors and shell companies

So what does the funder Our United Voices Inc. have to do with Moms for Liberty?

Our United Voices Inc. began operations in 2023. It was created with $3.7 million in untraceable donations because it’s a 501c4. It paid three of its five board members a combined $474,000. The organization also listed $653,791 in operation expenses. In return, the “work” provided by these three board members was to pay out three grants.

One grant was to “Moms for Liberty” (ID 87-2306476), a 501c4 organization. Through property records, I was able to identify the address on file for this branch of Moms for Liberty. It’s a single-family home in Austin, Texas, owned by Jason House. This grant from Our United Voices Inc. was for $35,000.

The second grant from Our United Voices Inc. was to the Foundation for American Content and Entertainment, the 501c3 that Phil Willard, Steve Hantler and Steve’s son, Scott Hantler, are all connected with. This grant was for $300,000.

The third and final grant from Our United Voices Inc. was to a 501c4 organization called Project Z in Atlanta, Ga. This grant was for $2 million.

What is Project Z?

I searched through property records matching the address for Project Z and found the address is a business called Professional Data Service. This consulting services acts as the treasury for any number of Political Action Committees. Professional Data Service was founded and is led by Paul Kilgore.

PACs are required to file regular fundraising reports with the Federal Elections Commission, so I pulled the most recent data for PACs operating during this election year.

The address for Professional Data Service/Paul Kilgore is the address on file for 148 PACs. Additionally, Kilgore and two of his colleagues are listed as the treasurers for another 93 PACs using PO boxes and addresses outside the state of Georgia. None of the PACs is named “Project Z.” Is “Project Z” a new committee that has yet to file financials with the FEC? Is it a nickname for an existing committee? Who knows.

In 2022, the Campaign Legal Center (a 501c3 founded by former Republican Sen. Trevor Potter) brought a lawsuit against Paul Kilgore, one of the PACs he served as treasurer for (Fighters for a Strong America PAC), and a funding entity that gave the PAC money (Leadership Action Fund).

According to the lawsuit, “Leadership Action Fund Inc., a Delaware tax-exempt corporation, appears to have served a single purpose: serving as a ‘straw donor’ for unknown persons to funnel over $620,000 in contributions to a super PAC, Fighters for a Strong America PAC, which in turn has made over $850,000 in independent expenditures supporting T.W. Shannon, a candidate for the U.S. Senate in Oklahoma, during the GOP runoff election.”

Straw donor schemes are increasing rapidly. The Campaign Legal Center wrote in 2023, “In a straw donation, a donor first gives funds to another person or entity — often a shell company created for this purpose — which then contributes those funds to a political committee.”

We have the 2010 Citizen United U.S. Supreme Court decision to thank for this turn of events in which dark, untraceable money is allowed to flood campaigns.

Is this what is happening with Our United Voices Inc.? Where did the initial $3.7 million in funding come from for this new 501c4 in Texas? Why is this supposedly Texas-based nonprofit spending $2 million for “Project Z” run by Paul Kilgore and his team in Georgia, the state former President Trump tried to get Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger (a Republican) to overturn?

I’ve shared all of this information with the Campaign Legal Center. In the meantime, I will continue to reach out to my own elected officials to advocate for free, fair and transparent elections. I’ll now add to my list of demands “and get dark money out of politics.”

 

Mara Richards Bim is serving as a Clemons Fellow with BNG. She is a recent master of divinity degree graduate from Perkins School of Theology at SMU. She also is an award-winning theater practitioner, playwright and director and founder of Cry Havoc Theater Company that operated in Dallas from 2014 to 2023.

 

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