Nonprofit funding flooded right-wing media in 2024

As presidential campaigns and their super PACs poured billions of dollars into advertising during the 2024 election cycle, conservative donors quietly directed more than $250 million in tax-deductible contributions to nonprofit right-wing media outlets. 

New IRS filings made available in December show that during the 2024 calendar year, the nonprofit affiliates of 18 conservative media organizations received $260.2 million in contributions from major donors and foundations.

The largest recipient of 501(c)(3) funding in this group was the late Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA, a multi-entity organization that, in addition to producing a high volume of social media content and podcasts, also stages major live events and runs organizing programs.

But beyond Turning Point, conservative donors funneled more than $170 million to other groups, including the conservative video operation Prager U; the longtime libertarian magazine and media outlet Reason; and the nonprofit affiliates of Real Clear Politics, The Daily Caller, and The Federalist. 

While those media efforts may be transparently partisan-leaning, other outlets that received conservative donor funding are far more opaque. For instance, the Community News Foundation, which is associated with a pink-slime fake news network called Metric Media, received over $10 million in 501c3 contributions in 2024. Similarly, the Lincoln Media Foundation—which ran shady news-themed Facebook pages in battleground states—received over $3.9 million in c3 funding in 2024. Informing America, another less-than-transparent source of right-wing media funding that was recently profiled by Mother Jones, brought in nearly $8 million in contributions that year.

Some of the sources of these groups’ donations are predictable. The right-wing donor-advised fund Donors Trust gave more than $26 million to these outlets, while other major givers are less familiar. The National Christian Charitable Foundation, which funds a wide variety of churches and Christian social services, gave $3.3 million, while the Lynde & Harry Bradley Foundation gave over $2 million. 

Here’s why it matters: While political operatives and media industry insiders may be familiar with the scale of for-profit partisan outlets like Fox News, Sinclair, and Newsmax, far fewer recognize the vast sums of 501(c)(3) funding that some of these conservative media organizations receive each year. That’s important to note during a period of time when Democratic operatives continue to pitch their own party’s major donors on funding schemes for liberal media outlets. 

To me, the surge of nonprofit funding to conservative media efforts in 2024 underscores how political dollars are increasingly flowing through channels beyond the reach of the FEC, reshaping how operatives and donors strategically reach voters during election years and beyond.

If you wisely chose to log off the political internet over the past few weeks, you may have missed the major political developments unfolding in Minnesota. After several years of investigations by prosecutors and local news outlets, The New York Times broke a story in late November detailing massive, multibillion-dollar public assistance scams that took place in the state during and after the COVID pandemic.

Because Democrats control the Minnesota state government—and given the eagerness of right-wing media outlets to score points against Gov. Tim Walz—the story quickly became fodder for conservative coverage. Since December 1, Fox News has published more than 100 stories about the scandal on its website, alongside hours of cable programming and punditry.

The media frenzy had begun to subside until two weeks ago, when a little-known conservative YouTuber named Nick Shirley posted a viral video titled “I Investigated Minnesota’s Billion Dollar Fraud Scandal.” The video, amplified by major right-wing influencers on social media, catapulted the story back into the headlines and created new headaches for the embattled Walz, who was facing re-election this year. Ultimately, the uproar proved too great a distraction: Walz abruptly announced yesterday that he would not seek another term.

Now, Shirley is taking a victory lap, appearing with other right-wing YouTubers like Shawn Ryan and Patrick Bet David and claiming he “ended Tim Walz.” The 23-year-old content creator is indeed the biggest winner here—he’s gained 430,000 new YouTube subscribers since December 1st, making his the fastest-growing political channel on the platform in the past month. 

Abdul El-Sayed, one of three major candidates running in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate in Michigan, released a video over the weekend where he was joined at the gym by leftist streamer Hasan Piker. Watch below:

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