About Us

Trinity Foundation: Who We Are

Trinity Foundation began in 1972 as a religious, charitable and educational non-profit foundation for promoting the public interest in the State of Texas by producing Christ-centered communications projects.  Our current board members are listed at the bottom of this page.

An early skepticism about the way religious programming was bought and sold prompted Trinity to conduct a controversial research project on the audience demographics and ratings of religious broadcasting. This preceded the scandals that rocked the religious television industry in the 1980’s. In 1987 after supplying testimony to congressional hearings about the religious TV industry, the foundation began full-time monitoring of religious programming and reporting abuses of the public trust. By the 1990s Trinity had become the leading “watchdog” of religious media, conducting investigations and providing information used to expose fraud and abuses committed in the name of God.

The foundation regularly provides assistance to print and electronic journalists investigating suspected fraud or other abuses of the public trust by members of the religious media. The foundation has worked with news organizations such as ABC News Prime Time Live, CBS News 60 Minutes, NBC News Dateline, CNN Special Reports, ABC News 20/20, CBS –Inside Edition, British Broadcasting Corporation, Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, London Independent, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and The Dallas Morning News (among many others).  In 2015, our investigations struck a chord when we assisted with HBO's John Oliver program Last Week Tonight about televangists. As of June 2016, the hilarious but sobering youtube video is approaching 12 million views.

The foundation has regularly provided testimony and investigative reports to various state and federal agencies.

From 2005 through 2011, the foundation worked closely with the US Senate Finance Committee on their investigation of religious non-profit organization abuses. The committee sent letters to six ministries in November 2007 seeking to determine if they were abusing their non-profit tax status. In a letter to the Senate committee, Trinity Foundation President Ole Anthony told the committee, “In some cases it is difficult if not impossible to tell the not-for-profit from the individual’s personal piggy-bank or from the for-profit entity.”

Others have agreed religious fraud is a growing problem. Deborah Bortner, former president of the North American Securities Administrators Association, told the committee, I’ve been a securities regulator for 20 years, and I’ve seen more money stolen in the name of God than in any other way.” The usual government oversight procedures have not been able to keep up. In a 2005 letter to Senator Grassley, IRS Commissioner Mark W. Everson admitted the IRS has not been able to properly confront the problem.

Unfortunately for the public, many of the huge organizations Trinity investigates are legally disguised as churches—literally disguised, as ininvisible funds, no accountability whatsoever. Churches (and $100M plus/year televangelist ministries) do not have to file the IRS 990 showing top salaries and where the money goes. To top things off, in 2009, the IRS suspended all investigations of churches including the most egregious offenders—congressional legislation has not kept up with IRS organizational realities. And even as the problem has increased, news media across the country have reduced their investigative budgets, allowing most of these abuses to continue unreported.
During the six-year period the Trinity Foundation was working with the Senate Finance Committee, we refrained from assisting with major news exposés at their request. During that period our membership and donations have declined drastically—we never imagined that this would affect our donor base so adversely. We ask that you consider becoming a monthly or otherwise regular supporter, small donations are welcome.

The International Bulletin of Missionary Research projected that ecclesiastical crime worldwide amounted to $50 Billion in 2015, eclipsing international missions giving by about 5 billion!  So, in 2015 we expanded internationally.  We sent out a press release announcing investigations together with volunteers around the world.  This year, our chief investigator travelled to and looked into religious fraud inside the Dominican Republic and Guatemala.

Other activities—Although Trinity’s main focus has been on exposing abusive behavior, the foundation has also been active in trying to right some of the wrongs we’ve discovered over the years. In the late 1980s Trinity Foundation launched the Dallas Project, a challenge to religious organizations to help the homeless. The spark for this effort came from what we saw as neglect and exploitation of the needy by the same religious organizations we were investigating. Hundreds of lives were touched as a result. Direction of the Dallas Project has since been taken under the wing of Community on Columbia (The Block) in 2010, a church where many members of Trinity Foundation attend.
Trinity Foundation employees continue to help meet the needs of homeless and distressed individuals on a regular basis. During the mid-90’s, the Foundation began to be involved in providing low-income housing in over a dozen apartment complexes in Oklahoma City and soon afterward in a suburb of Dayton, Ohio. These projects have ended, but we are still looking for a similar project closer to home.

2016 Trinity Foundation board members:

Ole Anthony, President

JW Luman, Vice-President

Pete Evans, Secretary/Treasurer

John Bloom, Director

Brian Kelcher, Director

Glenn Evans, Director

Robert Mitchell, Director