National Organization For Marriage - Nonprofit Status and Funding

Nonprofit Status and Funding

The group operates two nonprofit arms: a 501(c)(4) political advocacy group called National Organization for Marriage Inc. established in January 2008, and a 501(c)(3) called NOM Education Fund established in July 2008. The latter arm is not entitled to influence legislation or political campaigns. The Firefighters' Defense Fund, which existed to fund a successful sexual harassment lawsuit by firemen who claim they were forced to participate in a gay pride parade, was a NOM Education Fund project.

The group also operates a number of state-based political action committees such as National Organization for Marriage PAC New York founded in June 2009, and National Organization for Marriage California PAC founded in February 2009. The state PACs receive funding from the main 501(c)(4) NOM arm.

NOM has said that it has a wide base of grassroots support, but the majority of its funding is from very few large anonymous donors. In NOM's IRS filing for 2009, three donations of $2.4 million, $1.2 million and $1.1 million made up 68% of NOM's contributions and grants income of a little over $7.1 million, and just five donations made up 75%. In 2010, Jesse Zwick, then a reporter for the Washington Independent, said he uncovered a 2009 donation to NOM—$1.43 million from the Knights of Columbus—that reporter Luke Johnson later said was apparently not reported to the IRS by NOM. In 2010, two donors provided $6 million, two-thirds of the total donations for the year.

Gay rights activist Fred Karger gave his opinion that NOM is connected to the Latter Day Saint movement, with large private donations coming from Mormon sources. Gallagher responded by denying any connection to the LDS movement "except that a Mormon serves on NOM's board." Former board member Matthew S. Holland is a Mormon as is his replacement Orson Scott Card, and Catholic board member Robert P. George has served since August 2010 as an editorial advisor to the Deseret News, a newspaper owned by the Mormon church. Reporter Zwick demonstrated that at least one major donation in 2009 came from a Catholic group, the Knights of Columbus.

The organization's financial disclosures for the 2009 tax year reported revenues of about $7.4 million including investment income, and expenditures of about $7.5 million.