Revenge of the Non-Profits

**Andrew Heaton** (0:07)
Hello, and welcome to The Political Orphanage, a home for nice, thinky folks. I'm your host, Andrew Heaton, and you are joining me for a week of pushback, where I've invited experts on to set the record straight on something a prior expert, or maybe yours truly, got wrong. Today, the great Brian Dunning joins us. Brian is a prominent thinker and voice in the Skeptic community, an extremely successful, more so than me, podcaster in his own right, and also a professional debunker. And he joins us to offer some pushback on some of the more cynical interpretations that we had with Scott Hodge on Nonprofits last month. That episode was the Nonprofit Industrial Complex. And then afterwards, in the bonus episode, Brian will stick around to talk to me about what life is like in federal prison. You can hear that by going to patreon.com/andrewheaton, or on Substack at thepoliticalorphanage.com. Enjoy.
My guest today is Brian Dunning. He is the host of the Skeptoid podcast, has been on this program a couple of times, talking about all things skeptical. I believe the last time you were on, you were talking about a kind of UFO debunking movie, Brian, and I think you've got another one coming out that I look forward to talking about because I'm obsessed with Bob Lazar. So I'm waiting for baited breath with your next work. But today, specifically though, we're talking to you as the head of a nonprofit, because I recently had on Steve Hodge talking about nonprofits. You wanted to do some pushback on either my analysis or his. And I said, let's make that happen.
I want to be, if I'm wrong, I want to know. So first of all, what is the nonprofit that you had? What is your role with it?

**Brian Dunning** (1:57)
So I am the creative director of Skeptoid Media, and this is the company that was founded around the podcast that I started in 2006, and which by 2010 became my full-time job. That's what I've been doing ever since. And as you alluded, we now do documentary films and some other stuff. But by 2012, it seemed that most of our traction was from education. So I decided to make it a nonprofit. And at that time, it was just me by myself.
So I made it a nonprofit in order to qualify for grants and things like that.

**Andrew Heaton** (2:33)
Got it. Okay.

**Brian Dunning** (2:34)
So yeah, we've just kind of been creeping along ever since.

**Andrew Heaton** (2:37)
Yeah, I don't think it makes any sense for me to become a nonprofit. Like if I were eligible for grants, like if I finally get on Tyler Cowen's radar, and he's like, young man, this is my Tyler Cowen. I like the cutting of Jim. I'm just assuming that's how he talks. And he's like, I'd like to give you $100,000 grant, but you got to be tax deductible. Then at that point, it would make sense for me to be a nonprofit. From like a tax perspective, it really doesn't make any sense unless you're getting grants, right?

**Brian Dunning** (3:00)
No, it doesn't. In fact, I'm not sure that I would do it again.

**Andrew Heaton** (3:04)
Really?

**Brian Dunning** (3:04)
Because what ended up happening was, the majority of our funding comes from just people paying five and 10 bucks a month to get the premium version of the podcast. And the grants and the larger donations hasn't really come through. And I think a larger part of the reason for that is that granting organizations, they all have a particular mission. They typically serve a specific audience. And if you do a podcast that goes to everyone worldwide, what is your specific audience? And the number of grantors that are looking for that audience is much smaller. We can't say we serve Spanish-speaking kids in southwestern Nebraska with one artificial leg. And so, grants have not worked out well for us. But like you mentioned, we do get large private grants and donations from some of our donors.
And it does work out for them that they can make those tax deductible.

**Andrew Heaton** (4:04)
Most of it's going to pass through. Like you, Brian Dunning, are paying income tax, regardless of whether it's from a nonprofit or a profit, right?

**Brian Dunning** (4:10)
I get a regular W-2 paycheck like everyone else that has all my taxes taken out. And all the employees do. There's four employees. This is something I've dealt with since the very beginning, since I made it a nonprofit.
I remember in the early days of doing the podcast, I mentioned, oh, there's 300,000 listeners, whatever it was, and people said, oh, and he takes $5 a month. You figure most of them are paying it. That's an outrageous metric right there.