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https://www.thedailybeast.com/blexits-finances-are-slumpingbut-its-paycheck-to-candace-owens-keeps-coming/
Blexit’s Finances Are Slumping—but Its Paycheck to Candace Owens Keeps Coming
In 2021, the organization earned less than a third of its 2020 revenue. Owens made more than ever.
Donations to conservative commentator Candace Owens’ Blexit Foundation took a precipitous drop in 2021. But the organization paid Owens more than ever: $250,000 in salary, alone. That’s not including the chartered flights.
Founded in 2018, Blexit urges African-Americans to leave the Democratic Party, preferably to take up conservative politics. Amid racial justice protests in 2020, the Blexit Foundation reaped more than $7 million in donations. Now the organization is back in the public eye after its sometimes-collaborator Kanye West kicked off a firestorm of antisemitic comments, shortly after posing in “White Lives Matter” shirts with Owens, and pledging to buy Parler, the rightwing social media site Owens’ husband runs. The Blexit Foundation’s newly released 2021 tax filings suggest an organization that has struggled to keep up its fundraising figures—but kept the money flowing to top execs.
Reached for comment, Owens repeatedly declined to answer specific questions about how much the Blexit Foundation had dispensed, or to whom.
“In short, yes we raised money and proudly dispersed money for and to black businesses and continue to do so. Our filings are public, timely, and entirely comprehensive,” Owens wrote in an email. The Blexit organization did not otherwise comment.
The Blexit Foundation has been a 501(c)(3) nonprofit since 2019. Its charity status makes it tax-exempt, and its tax documents a matter of public record. Over the three years for which Blexit’s documents are available, the foundation has seen a surge—then a slump—in contributions.
In 2019, its first year as a nonprofit, the Blexit Foundation pulled in $904,575 in donations. The organization’s operations were modest that year. None of its top execs, including Owens, worked there full-time or drew a salary from the foundation.
But in 2020, amid national debates over race in the wake of George Floyd’s murder, Blexit’s fundraising skyrocketed. Blexit received $7,446,352 in contributions that year. It also started spending big.That year, Owens took $230,000in pay from Blexit. The nonprofit’s events director also made six figures, with a salary of $105,000.
Other expenses added up. In 2020, Blexit spent more than $1 million on travel, some of it first-class or charter. “Blexit allows pre-approved charter travel in certain circumstances for urgent business relative to raising funds for the organization as part of the normal course of business and due to heightened travel restrictions caused by the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic’s impact on commercial travel and flight availability,” the organization’s filings from that year show.
The organization also spent more than $1.8 million on fundraising, which resulted in more than $2.4 million for Blexit, giving it a net gain of over $600,000.
But the fundraising momentum did not carry into 2021, Blexit’s most recent filing suggests. Last year, the foundation received $2,342,820 in contributions, less than a third of what it raised the previous year. Despite that, the org spent nearly $1 million more than it earned, with its total payments to employees nearly doubling.
A sizable payment, $250,000 plus benefits, went to Owens. Another $612,000 went to fundraising, and $205,708 went to travel, some of which was first-class or charter.
The Blexit Foundation, like many nonprofits, often advertises its charitable deeds. On Twitter, Owens has touted big fundraising figures for Black-owned businesses that were damaged during protests over George Floyd’s murder in 2020.
“This month, #BLEXIT raised $200k for black businesses which were destroyed in the #BLM riots,” Owens tweeted in June 2020.