We have to talk about FAIR - The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism.
We have to talk about FAIR - The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism.
Or, or aptly, we have to talk about their CEO Bion Bartning.
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I met FAIR CEO Bion Bartning before the organization - properly titled The Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism - made its bold launch onto the scene with a star-studded Board of Advisors that included Bari Weiss, Melissa Chen, Peter Boghossian, Megyn Kelly, Steven Pinker, and more.
Back before they launched, I joined two mutual contacts on a group brainstorming call with Bion to discuss an idea one of them had to encourage alumni to pledge not to give another dime to their alma mater so long as the college was engaging in illiberal initiatives around equity, anti-racism and critical race theory. The campaign was a great idea, one conceived entirely by my friend, and I was happy to help in any way to make it a reality.
But on this group call, I watched as Bion Bartning stole the idea out from under him. Instead of brainstorming the idea with us to see if there was a fit with the organization he was launching, Bion immediately started registering URLs in his name, even though my friend had not agreed to partner with him on the idea and had signed no agreement with the organization. Bion made it very clear that if my friend wanted to pursue the idea, he would have to work through FAIR to get it done. My friend ultimately abandoned the idea entirely, and the campaign was never launched.
As an organizational psychologist, I’m used to seeing CEOs engaged in behavior that is, shall we say, less than above board. However, this was one of the most brazen things I had ever seen - I witnessed the theft of intellectual property by someone who was about to launch an organization with a massive war chest, claiming to fight for liberal values.
But I kept my mouth shut. I liked the idea of FAIR, believed in the positive intentions of many of the advisors, and wanted to see them be successful. I knew that sometimes the stress of a launch made people do things out of character, and I hoped that was the case with Bion.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when I heard that Bion sabotaged the fundraising campaign for an important legal challenge to critical race theory.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when I heard that Bion was withholding money raised to help parents fighting back against CRT.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when I heard that Bion wasn’t paying some of the vendors providing services to the organization, or wanted them to sign away the rights to their likeness to receive the payment they were already promised.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when it became obvious that FAIR wouldn’t be associated with anyone who publicly supported Trump for President - so much for a non-partisan organization.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when I heard that Bion was making demands of his staff to take things off their personal website that might be considered too right-wing.
I continued to keep my mouth shut when I heard Bion demanded an independent journalist sign over his website to FAIR, and threatened to just steal the content off of it if the keys weren’t handed over.
I’m not keeping my mouth shut anymore. The idea of FAIR is wonderful, and I do believe it has a world of potential. However, it will never be successful under its current leadership and something must be done. I want FAIR to be successful. The only way it can be is Bion Bartning is removed as CEO.
I’m not using names in this article because many of the people involved are afraid of Bion, fearing the repercussions of crossing him, even members of his own Advisory Board. But rest assured that for the last several months, I’ve heard a new horror story of Bion throwing someone under the bus about once a week. Oftentimes, the people he targets are people who have gone through cancelation themselves and are trying to do something good after the experience. They are the last people in the world who deserve this kind of treatment.
The final straw for me was FAIR’s response weak and pathetic response to Attorney General Merrick Garland going after parents who were speaking at school board meetings at domestic terrorists. Here is the full text of their response:
This is an organization with millions of dollars, an organization that believes in exercising moral courage…and the best response they could come up with to a deliberate attack on free speech by the Attorney General of the United States was a letter literally saying they trust the government to do the right thing. Here’s a video with more of my thoughts on this letter.
So I got to thinking, who approved this horrible letter?
I know that the letter from the National School Board Association was not approved by their Board of Directors.
Did FAIR’s Board of Directors approve this timid, nonsensical response, or did it come from Bion himself?
That led to a better question: Who exactly is on FAIR’s Board of Directors? FAIR may have a packed Advisory Board, but an Advisory Board is not the same thing as a Board of Directors. An Advisory Board is mostly for public relations and fundraising. A Board of Directors is compromised of the people who have fiduciary responsibility for the millions of dollars this organization has been given.
FAIR’s Board of Directors isn’t on their website. I asked around, and no one knew who was on it. In fact, Bion even says on FAIR’s Slack channel that FAIR didn’t have a Board of Directors. This screenshot is from an internal whistleblower who’s had enough of Bion’s nonsense:
Turns out, Bion deliberately misled his staff and volunteers when he posted this. Here are the incorporating documents for the organization, which specifically list three members of the FAIR Board of Directors: Bion Bartning, Melissa Chen, and Bari Weiss.
So, now we know that Bion deliberately misled the FAIR staff and volunteers. There has been a Board of Directors and has been since December 2020.
But perhaps a better question is this: Did Melissa Chen and Bari Weiss know they were on the Board of Directors? If they did, why aren’t they providing more oversight?
The truth is far more scandalous: I don’t think they had any idea they were named to the Board of Directors. And that is grossly unethical at best.
I’ve heard from enough whistleblowers to be fairly certain that Melissa Chen was not aware she was on the Board. I’m unsure about Bari Weiss but I would be surprised if she knew. That means that Bion may have incorporated the organization without two of the three members who are responsible for providing oversight to his activities knowing the roles they were legally required to fulfill.
But there’s another question I’d like answered.
If FAIR is a non-profit organization, then why does the primary donation form on their website specifically state that donations are not tax-deductable, and that if people want to make a tax-deductable donation, they need to go to a different site to do it?
What is the FAIR Advocacy Fund?
Why is that the main donation form off of their website, instead of the non-profit?
Where does the money go?
What are they doing with it?
Who is responsible for it?
Something is not right about this organization, and we need to start having an honest conversation about that given the amount of money they have raised in the name of defending free thought and expression of ideas.
Given everything I have heard, I do not believe this organization has any chance of being successful in achieving its goals with Bion Bartning at the helm.
Melissa and Bari have the votes to get him out, and that is what they should do. It’s what should have happened as soon as they discovered they were on the Board of Directors.
And if they do not, the only responsible thing for the members of the Advisory Board to do is to resign in protest until a new CEO is named.
I believe in the next few weeks, more of these stories will become known. I truly want FAIR to be successful. I hope they get through this rough patch and go on to do great things.
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Nonprofit lawyer here and small donor to FAIR. I think there might be some confusion that I can clear up to an extent.
There are a number of stages that a nonprofit typically goes through on the way to becoming a full-fledged 501c3 tax-deductible charity, and they aren't entirely mutually exclusive from a chronological standpoint, i.e. they often operate in parallel. It sounds like FAIR is at stage "1.5". The first stage is sponsorship under another organization's (in this case, "United Charitable") charitable status. But they have also taken the first stop towards "state 2", going out on its own, by filing articles of incorporation. The articles of incorporation is a state law matter that does not say much of anything about federal tax c3 charitable status, so even having been incorporated, they would still need to collect funds under the fiscal sponsorship. But they can't get c3 status without first incorporating, so it's typically done in parallel.
The "directors" listed under the incorporation papers, who would more accurately be termed, "incorporators", are sort of a "proto-" Board of Directors, but it wouldn't really surprise me if they are not in any way acting like a real Board of Directors, because the organization is still for the most part operating under the sponsorship of another organization, which does have a Board of Directors with fiduciary responsibilities around its activities and all of the money flowing to it.
It's likely that the three incorporators/directors will eventually become members of the Board of Director once it's up and running as a separate c3, but it's not a given. Right now, there just needs to be three people listed in the incorporation papers for purposes of state corporate law. They probably haven't done a single thing in that capacity other than agree to have their names listed there (and yes, hopefully they did in fact agree to do so), and if that were the case, there's nothing wrong with that. There's already another Board (United Charitable) exercising fiduciary responsibility over all of the money and activities of the organization.
The "Advocacy Fund" is a related but separate issue. Whether they have their own c3 status or are operating under the c3 status of another organization, they are not allowed to use c3 funds for political activities. But in order to engage in political activities, many nonprofits establish related "advocacy" funds that are allowed to do political activities, so long as the funds are segregated, both coming in and going out. That is to say, the funds that go to the c3 cannot be used in the advocacy fund, and the c3 cannot engage in advocacy except to the extent that it's paid for out of those segregated funds. Funds that are donated to c3 advocacy funds are not tax-deductible. So they are inviting people to give to the advocacy work, which is not tax-deductible, but if the donors would rather donate to the tax-deductible c3, they are invited to go over and do so. Very normal.
None of that addresses the other kinds of issues raised, so don't take this as any kind of endorsement of his leadership. I have zero information about any of it other than what you've written here. Just pointing out that there are good explanations for these particular issues.
Wow! Thank you for doing the research to expose all of this. I’m 100% with you - want FAIR to succeed but not with a corrupt / unethical leader. He needs to go!!