Minnesota Freedom Fund exposed, Part 2

A local cause célèbre for everyone from Hollywood stars to big name politicians is generating more nationwide headlines.

AlphaNews reports that former President Trump mentioned the Minnesota Freedom Fund (MFF) during his campaign rally in Charlotte, North Carolina, yesterday.

In Part 1 of this series, we looked at how the Fund has spent its donors’ money. In this part, we will look at where the Fund gets its money.

The Minneapolis Star Tribune reports that MFF, incorporated as a nonprofit in 2017 by two University of Minnesota graduate students, was seeded with $10,000 in grants from the U-M.

The Fund received $5,000 through the Acara Challenge, a grant competition held by the University’s Institute on the Environment. The other $5,000 was funded by a Sands Fellowship through the University’s Carlson School of Management.

To repeat: the Minnesota Freedom Fund was launched with funding exclusively provided by the University of Minnesota.

As I mentioned yesterday, through the end of 2022, more than 96 percent of all the money taken in by MFF was donated in a few months after the George Floyd riots of 2020.

Who gave the money? For the most part, individuals. Famous individuals. New York magazine ran a piece in May 2021 on MFF, interviewing the Fund’s leadership:

Justin Timberlake was the first big donor who tweeted about us. Then we just started getting so many calls saying, “Justin did it, so I’m going to donate.” Steve Carell donated, and so did Seth Rogen. By Thursday, three days after Floyd’s murder, we were up to $5 million, and it just wouldn’t stop. 

A Business Insider report adds the names Don Cheadle, Patton Oswalt, and others to the celebrity donor list, and includes screen shots of celebrity tweets touting the Fund.

No tweet was more (in)famous than now-Presidential-candidate Kamala Harris’ June 1, 2020, post on X and Facebook encouraging donations to the group:

If you click on the still-active X or Facebook link, it takes you to a customized Kamala Harris for MFF landing page,

Clearly this effort was intended to associate Harris personally (name and likeness) with the Minnesota Freedom Fund cause. Call it an in-kind donation flowing in both directions.

It’s worth noting that the donations then were processed through ActBlue and now through NGP Van, both fundraising vehicles associated with the Democratic Party.

How the Fund drew the attention of these big-name celebrities and politicians is less clear.

Philanthropy.com reported that the first $31 million (of the eventual $41 million) donated to MFF in 2020 came from some 900,000 individuals. That works out to an average of under $35 per donor.

Keep in mind that the Fund is a rated 501c3 charity, duly registered with the IRS and the state Attorney General’s office. It’s respectable enough that big corporations like Ecolab and Medtronic include the nonprofit on their approved corporate donor list, eligible for matching dollars on employee donations, as reported by AlphaNews.

Had MFF stuck with bailing out rioters, it probably would have been forgotten by now. But a cottage industry has sprung up tracking the later crimes (including murder) committed by recipients of its bailouts of violent criminals.

Then, early last year, MFF moved into the explicitly political realm, starting up the dark money spinoff Minnesota Freedom Fund Action. The MN Reformer reported in February 2023:

Their new arm, the Minnesota Freedom Fund Action (MFF Action), is a 501(c)4 political advocacy organization, which means it can lobby lawmakers to change state law so people aren’t jailed before they’re found guilty just because they don’t have enough money to make bail. 

The Reformer added:

[T]he Freedom Fund’s agenda is “on the march” at the Legislature, with bills eliminating cash bail for misdemeanors, restoring voting rights for people on parole or probation, giving driver’s licenses to undocumented people, legalizing marijuana and reforming misdemeanor sentences.

In March 2023, the Star Tribune reported on Action’s launch:

Unlike most nonprofits, the new political arm, which held its first campaign event Tuesday, will be able to endorse candidates, donate to political campaigns and lobby lawmakers more.

Their goal is to end cash bail in Minnesota in seven to 10 years.

Talk about mission creep.