Jen Hatmaker

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's true that Legacy Collective completely reorganized shortly after J and B filed for divorce. In October 2020 Brandon was removed from the board of directors and CEO position and quietly moved to the team of "advisors." By the end of the year, he was no longer part of LC--nor were his sister or her spouse.

During this time, LC brought it new leadership and reorganized to a new structure. Previously it was set up as a Donor Advised Fund under a separate 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization, Pure Charity. In July 2021, Legacy Collective filed a new Certification of Formation so that LC could be established as an independent non-profit 501(c)(3). This allows LC to receive funding from a wider range of sources. (Donor Advised Funds are limited in the ways they can receive funds; for example, you can't receive corporate matching gifts with DAFs.) In Jen's own words from January 2022, "We’ve spent a year and a half re-structuring Legacy, and now with the best team, the best practices, and the best community, we are ready to scale beyond our wildest dreams."

Legacy Collective continues to use Pure Charity for their donation management. In January 2022, they announced that they "will continue to partner with Pure Charity for our donation management." That could change in the future, since Legacy can now receive the donations directly under the new 501c3 structure.

If you go to the LC's website "About" page, the new bylaws and certificate of formation filed on July 13, 2021 are right there. All operations were moved under the new entity in January 2022.

This restructuring was clearly a top priority in the early days of the divorce. Whether that was because it had been mismanaged is unknown, but certainly a DAF structure was not a great choice for an organization of its size or mission, so I can see why their new management team recommended the reorg. Yet with a management team of LCs size, it seems wasteful to continue to use Pure (they take 5% off the top of any donation) in addition to LC's own administrative cost structure. In 2021 about 28% of funds raised went to admin and marketing. And some of the donations leave me scratching my head, like the one to Philanthropitch, the venture backed "Shark Tank" for new philanthropies....nothing wrong with it per se, but doesn't seem to fit the purported mission of LC.

Wow. Great rundown. Love how it’s fact based. Thank you.

[Anonymous]

So instead of someone directly donating to a charity, they give to legacy collective who then gives 5% to pure charity plus takes 28% for itself. So one third of the donation is lost before it ever reaches its intended charity? What is the reason for using legacy collective is to bring donations to the recipient charities? Is it because of Jen’s wooing them to give to her legacy collective where she picks out the recipients based on her values and interests? Her followers trust her wisdom in the choosing so they give their money to be a part of her collective? Then if they give $200 or more a month they can have an annual dinner in her yard.
Not trying to be snarky I’m genuinely confused.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So instead of someone directly donating to a charity, they give to legacy collective who then gives 5% to pure charity plus takes 28% for itself. So one third of the donation is lost before it ever reaches its intended charity? What is the reason for using legacy collective is to bring donations to the recipient charities? Is it because of Jen’s wooing them to give to her legacy collective where she picks out the recipients based on her values and interests? Her followers trust her wisdom in the choosing so they give their money to be a part of her collective? Then if they give $200 or more a month they can have an annual dinner in her yard.
Not trying to be snarky I’m genuinely confused.

Move along, nothing to see here, folks.

[Anonymous]

What if…..hear me out…. Jen let her 800 thousand plus followers on social media know about the organizations she likes…… so that people could donate to those organizations directly…… and more dollars would actually make it to the people doing THE WORK?

[Anonymous]

Did restructuring legacy collective provide a way to get a clean slate and potentially cover any previous mismanagement by Brandon?

[Anonymous]

FYI, the 28% is inclusive of fees paid to Pure, so 72% of funds raised in 2021 went to the charities. This isn't out of the realm of normal for some charitable foundations but there are plenty of charitable organizations who operate with a much lower cost structure. I'm not interested in giving to an organizatino with a bloated management structure and fee-heavy process.

Anonymous wrote:Did restructuring legacy collective provide a way to get a clean slate and potentially cover any previous mismanagement by Brandon?

This is certainly a question that's crossed my mind but don't know the answer to. Quite possibly the speed with which the divorce was filed suggests there could have been financial mismanagement that needed to be cut off asap, but that's only speculation. And if there was financial mismanagement, it may have been entirely unrelated to LC. If it was related to LC, it's possible they struck a deal...if Brandon agreed to leave quietly, they would restructure without making a fuss or accusations towards him. As long as the law wasn't broken, this would be a viable option and better for Legacy Collective. No one in management would have wanted to leak a clue that their donor's funds hasn't been managed wisely--that would have been a death knell for LC.

[Anonymous]

How does this 28% overhead get spent? Is there a place where these expenses are broken down line by line with full transparency?
Did your research yield how much money LC takes in annually? Curious how much that 28% was in actual dollars.

[Anonymous]

I know this is off topic and a bit snarky but Brandon's new girlfriend has huge eyelashes, huge boobs, and huge front teeth. Wow.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:FYI, the 28% is inclusive of fees paid to Pure, so 72% of funds raised in 2021 went to the charities. This isn't out of the realm of normal for some charitable foundations but there are plenty of charitable organizations who operate with a much lower cost structure. I'm not interested in giving to an organizatino with a bloated management structure and fee-heavy process.

And the donations are passed on to other charities, who in turn obviously also use part of the money for their administrative costs.

I really don’t get the point of this, especially when they pass funds on to places like World Central Kitchen who are really well known. It’s not like they are always finding niche charities.

[Anonymous]

I don't understand how people can keep following someone who puts on "dinners" for a profit every time you turn around.
It's the posing as a sjw who shuns materialism-meets the vita vega vega-woman again!
So sorry for people being conned into idealizing people like this. The thing that makes Jen dangerous is that she isn't like a Ree Drummond or Martha Stewart, that unites people in their fantasy of good food, pretty houses, and happy times. Jen has delved into much deeper and sinister things with her superficial theology and bigoted new puritanism. She is an influencer that tries to infiltrate all aspects of her followers lives to the point that they basically accept any hypocrisy that comes along. Deconstruction is not always for the better.
And an observation- why would a bunch of Christian macho motorcycle guy wannabes hang out at "Twin Peaks"? Isn't that like Hooters?

[Anonymous]

The meeting at twin peaks (like hooters) was some regional motorcycle club meeting to discuss, “politics.” Unfortunately the Banditos and the Cossacks (who weren’t invited) were at war over wearing jingling things from their leathers. (So the article said) so then the non criminal biker gangs showed up for the regional meeting not knowing the cops had been tipped off a big fight was expected. The fight starts leaving 9 dead, 20 more injured. Jen’s brother was there representing his motorcycle club grim guardians. The whole thing is crazy. Why do these non criminal biker clubs need to dress like they are hells angels wanna be’s right down to the knuckle tats. Why do the Christian charity motorcycle club need to dress scary at all when their mission is to abused children. It’s all silliness. Grown men seeking belonging in a subculture wildly different from their church upbringings. Guess it’s thrilling right up until you spend the day in jail having narrowly dodged taking a bullet during the gang warfare.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I know this is off topic and a bit snarky but Brandon's new girlfriend has huge eyelashes, huge boobs, and huge front teeth. Wow.

Nice try.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:How does this 28% overhead get spent? Is there a place where these expenses are broken down line by line with full transparency?
Did your research yield how much money LC takes in annually? Curious how much that 28% was in actual dollars.

I've looked for itemized line-by-line expenses, but haven't found any shared publicly. More transparency would be desirable. I have found some "bigger picture" numbers.

From the 2021 Annual Report linked on the Legacy Collective website:
Since 2015 Legacy Collective has raised over $5mm of which Admin+Ops+Marketing fees claimed 30%

In 2021, LC raised $1,524,188 and gave grants totaling $1,086,779. Admin+Ops+Marketing were 28% or approximately $426,772. That accounts for most of what wasn't donated.

Funds raised of $1,524,188 less grants of $1,086,779 = $437,409. So about $426K of this was admin fees and about $10K left in the pool for future donations.

From the LC website: "Admin and operational costs include Credit Card Fees, Receipting, System Maintenance, Web Hosting, Grant Administration, Project Vetting, Merchant costs, Administrative Support, etc." Tell us more what "etc" includes. $427K is a LOT of money.

Of note- grants in 2020 were only $385,000. This is quite low compared to the adjacent years, and considering LC raised over $5mm in the first six years of operating. Makes you wonder what was going on behind the scenes in 2020. I dont' think COVID wouldn't explain a drop of that magnitude...a lot of charities actually had a strong year in 2020.
However, it's expected that in 2021 and going forward, Legacy would raise significantly more funds under their new 501(c)(3) model. They've launched Corporate Giving Circles and now qualify for corporate matching.

Legacy has an interesting model that requires a monthly commitment. There is no way to make a one-time donation to Legacy Collective, unless it's over and above your monthly contribution. Clever model to get people locked in, maybe their ideal customer is one that forgets about all those monthly recurring credit card charges? Or doesn't realize that close to 30% of what they donate doesn't reach the intended target?

[Anonymous]

Not including Jen there are five people "on staff". Not sure that they're part time or how they're compensated but that sounds sort like quite a heavy spend if their donations were $1.5M last year and only $486K was for overhead.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Maybe the issue here about the affirmation isn't to call out her change of opinion- which yes, is not uncommon at all and is in fact the status quo among progressive Christians. Maybe the problem if when someone has a change of heart and immediately claims to "hate" the 50 percent or so of Christians who think like she did last week!
Also, as is often sadly the case, on the heels of "deconstruction" seems to have come "disolution"- changes in expression(cringy frequent profanity), announcing that church isn't necessary, and basically acting as though her faith has a very small place in her head. This is happening with a lot of celebrity Christians theses days and leads me to think that some of them only hung onto Christianity as long as things went well for them. When life lets them down, there's nothing there, showing that they are just as much a victim of "American Christianity" and the prosperity/personal happiness thing as the poor dumb Evangelicals that they scorn.

It’s a common tale. Back in the 90s and 2000s there was no real downside for celebrities, culturally, to being a Christian, even a conservative ones with conservative values. Now days, though, there is a huge downside for celebrities and people in the media
saying things like sex before marriage is a sin, that even a thing like ‘sin’ exists, that human life begins at conception, that Christ and Christi alone saves sinners, etc. Nothing will get you immediately dismissed from elite circles than believing and saying such horrifically unfashionable things. Therefore, we are seeing is a mass abandonment from such beliefs among formally “Christian Celebrities”. Basically, no one wants to be the weirdo and outside the mainstream looking in, especially ambitious social climber types. The thirst for public approval for folks such as these is just too intense.

White evangelical American Christianity aligned itself with Trump and crowned him savior, at the very least neglected to speak out against how many Christians were aligning him with the beliefs. Many people have scrambled to get as far away from that version of Christianity as possible. Jen was obviously going through a personal reckoning with her faith during this time, but many Christians were ostracized by Trumpism. I hate it when people act like they are some sort of martyr or that Christianity is in any way persecuted in America. I was someone who was drawn to Jen’s platform because she was one of the first and the loudest Christian voices to take a stand against the glorification of Trump. It was bold at the time, given her audience. Comparing her to non-Christians or mainstream celebrities isn’t quite apples to apples. Hers was a distinctly Christian voice. Fast forward to current times, her appeal is watered down by the promo codes and the her lack of relatability, but I’m not furious with her about any of it. I take what works for me and leave the rest. For goodness sake’s, unfollow the woman. She doesn’t owe any of us anything. If you feel betrayed, that’s on you for giving a stranger that much of your emotional energy.