Conservative Activists Face Attacks on Fundraising

Shawn McBreairty, a journalist and podcast host for the Maine Source of Truth. Courtesy of Shawn McBreairty

Conservative activists, especially those fighting what they describe as the “sexual grooming” of children, have a problem: the world’s largest fundraising platform can kneecap their efforts.

Shawn McBreairty, a Maine parental rights advocate, has been fighting a radical LGBT curriculum in Maine’s Regional School Unit (RSU) 22. He recently won a $40,000 lawsuit against a Maine school district that attempted to ban him from its property.

But his crusade has had mounting costs beyond that legal battle, he said.

“Conservatives are being throttled down,” he said. “We have less of an ability, or [we have an] inability, to raise funds to fight this stuff.”

To continue to his efforts, he opened a GoFundMe account in May 2021 so others could donate to his fight. He raised about $5,000, he said.

Then GoFundMe shut him down, saying he'd violated the company’s terms of service, but failing to elaborate. He assumed it was because the company didn’t agree with his conservative beliefs.

And he’s not alone. Other groups and individuals raising money to oppose left-leaning policies have seen their accounts closed too. It’s the conservative cause that seems to be under attack, he said.

Members of Parents As First Educators protest against the Ontario government’s recently unveiled sex education curriculum in Toronto on Aug. 22, 2019. Becky Zhou/The Epoch Times

GoFundMe lets users beseech strangers for money to fund their personal needs, projects, or activism. People use it for expenses for a wide range of causes, such as medical emergencies, education expenses, support for nonprofits, and much more.

Funding the Fight

With a 34 percent share of the crowdfunding industry, GoFundMe is the world’s largest platform of its kind, with more than $15 billion in money raised.

GoFundMe’s chairman, Robert Solomon, has said his “grand ambition” is for all internet charities to flow through GoFundMe. But his website has often de-platformed conservative causes. It famously threatened to confiscate and redistribute the money originally donated to the February 2022 Canada trucker protests before relenting and giving the money back to donors.

At first, McBreairty’s GoFundMe account was a steady source of fundraising income. On good days, his page raised a few hundred dollars, he said, allowing him to pay for legal representation and other advocacy expenses, such as signage.

The money from the judgment against a school district in Maine went to paying his legal bills in that case, and to paying lawyers working on another lawsuit against McBreairty, brought by Hermon High School. The school accused McBreairty of bullying and harassing teacher Mallory Cook, after he pointed out on Twitter that she helped make a political anti-Trump video from a school classroom. The video was made for Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and the Maine People’s Alliance, a progressive political group. Cook also runs the school’s Gender and Sexuality Alliance club, which creates LGBT book displays in the school library.

Trucks sit parked on Wellington Street near the Parliament Buildings as truckers and their supporters take part in a convoy to protest COVID-19 vaccine mandates for cross-border truck drivers in Ottawa, Canada, on Jan. 29, 2022. GoFundMe took $10 million away from the Canadian protests against vaccine mandates. Patrick Doyle/Reuters

Losing access to fundraising on GoFundMe surely will hamper his activism efforts. He can’t continue without donations to help cover the costs.

“I’m not putting a penny of this into my pocket,” he said. “In fact, I’ve lost like 150 grand by doing what I’m doing over the last year, and several months.”

When GoFundMe shut down his account, he was flabbergasted.

“Without any real reason, they just said, ‘Hey, you’re done,’” McBreairty said.

The Epoch Times emailed GoFundMe for comment, but received no response.

McBreairty previously worked in several different major business management jobs. But for now, he dedicates his time to advocacy against radical gender ideology in Maine.

To give like-minded people the opportunity to donate, he’s created an account with the Christian fundraising website GiveSendGo. But it doesn’t draw the same level of support as his now-closed GoFundMe account, he said. Donations trickle in. So far, he’s raised $2,000 of his $50,000 goal.

GoFundMe continues to maintain an account from school district equity lead Ann Maksymowicz, who raised funds to push back against McBreairty, after he placed a sign on his lawn showing she didn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance. So far, her campaign has raked in over $15,000.

Missing Money

McBreairty claims one victory in his battle with GoFundMe. When the company shut down his account, he didn’t lose much money—only the last day’s worth of donations. He added he doesn’t know the exact amount raised.

He'd heard about GoFundMe shutting down the accounts of other conservative activists, and anticipated the same could happen to him. So he removed the donated money every day, transferring it to his bank account, he said.

A July 13, 2021 email exchange between GoFundMe and Shawn McBreairty regarding the termination of his GoFundMe account. McBreairty said he never received a response to his question. Photo courtesy of Shawn McBreairty

Others, however, weren’t as fortunate.

When GoFundMe closes accounts, the money in the account doesn’t go to the account’s owner, he said. Instead, it’s returned to donors.

Tony Kinnett, a former administrator at Indianapolis Public Schools, explained in a viral video how schools secretly teach children critical race theory.

Tony Kinnett's GoFundMe page raised about $5,000 by the end, but he got none of the money raised because the website deleted it. Screenshot. Photo courtesy of Tony Kinnett

Soon after, his school fired him.

The loss of his job left Kinnett in a difficult position, he said. Before he started a new job, he said, his wife went into preterm labor.

“We were worried about medical bills, and that really stacking up,” he said. “You know, the medical bills always come at the worst time.”

Then, one of his friends decided to help by opening a GoFundMe account, he said.

“He was like, ‘Hey! Tony’s been unceremoniously fired by Indianapolis,  while his wife was in labor, and it’s all, like, chaotic. Just to make ends meet for a month or so, let’s try to raise Tony $3,000,” Kinnett recalled his friend saying.

The account exceeded the goal, eventually raising about $5,000, Kinnett said. But before he could remove the money, GoFundMe removed his account.

“Some trolls on Twitter, who didn’t like me, and were very upset about it—they reported the GoFundMe for hate speech. And GoFundMe took it down and said, ‘We’re not going to review this. You can’t appeal this,’” Kinnett said.

A Community of Cancelation

GoFundMe told Kinnett’s friend that the fundraiser violated its community standards, but refused to explain why, he said.

Kinnett hadn’t taken money out of his account daily, he said. GoFundMe told him that the cash donated to him was returned to its original donors.

“$5,000 that some people had donated to me and my wife just vanished into thin air,” he said. “And I guess they got their money back ... I suppose.”

He never received the financial help that had been offered during that difficult time.

“Looking forward to that gracious kindness of people, and then having that stripped away, was really depressing,” he said.

And GoFundMe’s action confused him. Kinnett wasn’t an activist when his account was shut down, he said. He was just someone with medical expenses who had gotten fired.

“I was amazed about [it] because I hadn’t even, at that time, done anything overtly political,” he said.

Kinnett said he hasn’t started up a new fundraiser on another crowdfunding site for several reasons.

“I didn’t want that particular GoFundMe. I was honestly flattered that someone else would run one for me,” said Kinnett.

He worried that if he opened his own GoFundMe, some might think he was a whistleblower only to raise money by playing the culture war.

Tony Kinnett's friend, Frank, attempted to contact GoFundMe about why the company canceled the fundraiser, but didn't receive an answer, Kinnett said. Courtesy of Tony Kinnett

“We had to dip into our savings,” Kinnett said. “We had to reach out to some family just to get a little bit of assistance, and paying off the medical bills took a lot longer.”

Freedom in Fundraising

GoFundMe’s massive market share gives company officials confidence that if people don’t fundraise with it, their fundraisers won’t be successful, said Jacob Wells, founder and chief financial officer of competitor GiveSendGo.

“They realized or felt like they were the players in the game,“ Wells said. ”So if they made the decision to cut someone off, the money wouldn’t go anywhere else, because there was nowhere else for it to go.”

But GoFundMe is wrong, he said. GiveSendGo takes crowdfunding requests from both conservative and liberal groups.

“We joke all the time that GoFundMe is our greatest marketing agent because they keep pushing people toward us,” Wells said.

Jacob Wells, cofounder and chief financial officer of GiveSendGo. Photo Courtesy of GiveSendGo

His company’s commitment to allowing groups from different political persuasions to raise money on his platform springs from his Christian faith, Wells said.

Anyone can be wrong, he added. So, Christians should allow political disagreement.

“Leftist ideology is about the pride of humanity and ‘Us being whatever we want to be,'“ he said. ”And the other side of the narrative is God-centric, which says, ‘I don’t know everything.’”

Although GiveSendGo may be most publicized for acts like raising money for the Canadian trucker protests or Kyle Rittenhouse’s defense fund, it also includes fundraisers from Black Lives Matter, LGBT groups, and even the Global Church of Satan, said Wells.

“If it is legal, then you can use our platform for it,” he said.

Despite this commitment, conservative groups make up most of the political fundraisers on GiveSendGo’s website.

A search of GiveSendGo’s platform for phrases like “LGBT,” “BLM,” and “Socialist” found one pro-LGBT bail fund, which appears designed to test the platform’s free speech claims. The vast majority of other groups were politically conservative and dedicated to opposing these causes.

One side's activists have easy access to the world's largest crowdfunding website. The other's don't. Photo of LGBT activists and their supporters rally in support of transgender people on the steps of New York City Hall, N.Y., on Oct. 24, 2018. Drew Angerer/Getty Images

Wells said he expects his platform to beat GoFundMe in the long term, because it will platform more people. GoFundme also charges users a fee, while GiveSendGo runs exclusively on donations.

Currently, GiveSendGo’s website is noticeably smaller than GoFundMe’s. When searching the word “Conservative,” GoFundMe has 1,000 entries. For the same search, GiveSendGo has 400 entries.

But it’s growing rapidly, Wells said. In the past year, the site has seen a 500 percent increase in fundraiser processing, and expanded from 40 countries to 86, he said.

“People are sick and tired of being told that their voice doesn’t matter, that they shouldn’t have a voice, that their thoughts don’t matter,“ Wells said. ”And they’re looking for companies that are willing to stand on the side of freedom.”

Correction: a previous version of this article misstated the amoud of personal funds McBreairty spent on his advocacy efforts. The article also included the wrong spelling of Mallory Cook’s name. The Epoch Times regrets the errors.