NRA Cuts Costs--and Lavishes Executives With Perks

[struggle4progress]

Mike Spies and John Cook
November 28, 2018 4:10 PM

The National Rifle Association paid more than $100,000 in personal expenses for an official who is now leading an austerity campaign within the organization, new tax filings show.

The official, Josh Powell, is the NRA’s executive director for general operations. The Trace and Mother Jones reported two weeks ago that Powell, along with the NRA’s new treasurer, Craig Spray, is seeking to impose steep cuts to the gun group’s budget. The effort is so stringent that the NRA did away with free coffee and water coolers in its Fairfax headquarters, causing consternation among NRA staffers. On Wednesday, NRATV staffer Cameron Gray announced on Twitter that he and “several colleagues” had been laid off ...

According to the NRA’s latest tax filing, released earlier this month, Powell’s total compensation for 2017 was almost $800,000. Of that, the records say, $102,484 took the form of “taxable personal expenses.” Another executive, Todd Grable, generated more than $132,000 in expenses, the documents show. The filings do not specify the type of personal expenses that were paid, but an NRA spokesperson told The Trace that it provides “corporate living arrangements” for Powell “so that he may maintain a home near headquarters and address the personal living needs of his family in Michigan.” (The returns disclose for the first time that the NRA pays housing costs for a total of four unnamed executives.)

A Trace investigation into Powell’s business history published last month revealed a long trail of defaulted debts, including 20 lawsuits for more than $400,000 from unpaid vendors ...

https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2018/11/nra-money-executive-perks-pay-cutting-costs/

[dixiegrrrrl]

1. Amazing how the Reich Wingers have learned to live so well on donations.

And/or campaign funds.
can you imagine being a long time donor and just now reading how they spend your money.?

[keithbvadu2]

2. The NRA Is Being Sued Over Its Relentless Telemarketing Campaigns

The NRA Is Being Sued Over Its Relentless Telemarketing Campaigns

When begging for bucks goes wrong.

https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-nra-is-being-sued-over-its-relentless-telemarketing-campaigns

The NRA has employed InfoCision since 2012 under a contract that grants the fundraising company up to 65 percent of the funds it raises on the NRA’s behalf. InfoCision gets between $2.50 and $3.75 for each “completed call” to potential NRA donors, and up to half of the regular payments for new or renewed NRA memberships.
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If those high fees are unavoidable, they can also have the effect of obscuring, for a potential donor, exactly where his or her money is going. Many of those speaking with an InfoCision fundraiser, after all, will not know that a majority of their donation is not going to the charity that fundraiser is representing.

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comment from a blog

I had a coworker who was a big time gun owner who kept a gun in every room in the house just in case someone broke in (lots of problems with that idea, may be worth a blog article someday, but that’s what he did). He even went so far as to start buying more guns for each room after a school shooting, like home invasion and mass shooting are correlated somehow. He had let his NRA membership lapse and refused to renew it because he got tired of nonstop requests for donations. To him all the membership did was give the NRA to badger him for more money with phone calls, and direct mailings. If the
organization is as strapped for cash as it appears, those solicitations may have gone way over the top and people are simply tired of being badgered for money and are choosing to let their membership to lapse.