Montana’s governor, Republican Greg Gianforte, is among the state’s highest-profile political figures. He’s also a major philanthropic force.
Nonprofit tax records indicate that his family foundation gave $57 million to charities and social issue nonprofits between 2017, the year Gianforte was first elected to public office as a Montana congressman, and 2022, the most recent year for which detailed data is publicly available.
Over that time period, the foundation’s reported assets ranged from about $163 million to $232 million. According to a Montana Nonprofit Association directory from 2022, its holdings put the Gianforte foundation among the largest philanthropic organizations registered in the state.
Gianforte made his wealth in part by founding RightNow Technologies in Bozeman in 1997 and later selling the company to Oracle Corp. in 2011 for more than $1 billion. His net worth has not been recently estimated, but the governor’s ongoing investments have resulted in an approximate annual income of $6 million, according to his private tax returns reviewed by The Associated Press. The family’s charity, classified as a private foundation, is not required to list specific sources of revenue.
Gifts made through the Gianforte Family Foundation are disclosed through publicly available IRS form 990 tax filings. Montana Free Press has compiled and analyzed the listed donations during the six-year period of Gianforte’s political tenure and consulted the foundation’s self-published reports, the most recent of which also includes some information about its philanthropic priorities in 2023.
In its latest annual report, the foundation described three areas of emphasis since its founding in 2004: “equipping Montanans through education; strengthening families through ministries; restoring individuals through relationship.”
“Societal issues in Montana and around the world compel us to anticipate growing needs and solutions,” the report said, pointing to homelessness, addiction and human trafficking. “Recognizing a decline in two-parent families, traditional values, and church attendance — and corresponding rises in mental health struggles, trauma, and crime — we partner with organizations that strengthen individuals, families, and communities.”
The foundation reports that, as of 2023, it has given away a total of nearly $119 million in grants over its 20-year existence. The foundation’s website currently lists the governor and his wife, First Lady Susan Gianforte, as its sole trustees.
Over the six years of data reviewed by MTFP, the recipients who received the most money from the Gianforte foundation were Alliance for Choice in Education, a Colorado-based group that advocates for more access to private education options, Montana State University Alumni Foundation, and Grace Bible Church, the congregation Gianforte attends in Bozeman. Donations to those three groups, totaling $13.7 million, make up nearly a quarter of the foundation’s total donations in the examined time period.
In total, the Gianforte foundation gave to more than 380 Montana-based groups and nearly 90 groups based elsewhere over the examined period. The portion of the foundation’s overall donations that went to Montana-based organizations rose steadily, from about 53% of total giving in 2017 to 67%, or $7.3 million, in 2022. That year, the foundation reported giving $3.4 million to out-of-state organizations.
The foundation reported its total assets as $183.6 million in 2022. Its total charitable giving for the year, $11 million, represented about 6% of its holdings.
The foundation’s top-dollar recipients often change from year to year. Donations to the Alliance for Choice in Education, one of the key players in generating Montana’s private school tax credits, have declined since a peak of just over $2 million in 2019. The Montana State University Alumni Foundation received more than $5 million during the six-year period, with most of that amount coming from donations in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Those gifts are part of a long-term $50 million pledge from the Gianforte foundation the university said will be dedicated to constructing a new building to a house the Gianforte School of Computing slated to open in 2026. Gifts to Grace Bible Church ranged from $120,000 to $1.2 million annually during Gianforte’s time in public office.
Consistent recipients within the period analyzed by MTFP include Child Bridge, a faith-based nonprofit based in Big Fork that helps recruit Christian foster and adoptive families and has received annual gifts ranging from $300,000 to $450,000. The Montana Family Institute, a 501(c)(3) arm of the Montana Family Foundation, a Christian policy and advocacy group, received $1.7 million overall from the Gianforte foundation. According to the institute’s publicly available IRS filings, that giving accounted for nearly half of its total revenues from 2017 to 2022. The Rafiki Foundation, a Florida-based organization focused on international missionary work, received just under $2.2 million over the six-year period in annual installments ranging from $250,000 to $573,000.
Gianforte foundation grants have flowed to about 470 distinct recipients over his time in public office, including organizations located in 47 of Montana’s 56 counties. While not always among the foundation’s highest-dollar recipients, many of those local groups play notable roles in their communities by providing homeless shelters, food banks, addiction recovery services and arts and culture investments. (Montana Free Press, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, has not received donations from the foundation; a list of MTFP donors is available here.)
Rose Chan Loui, a nonprofit tax law expert and professor at the UCLA School of Law, said the Gianfortes likely get an income tax reduction when they give money to their private family foundation, though it’s a lesser benefit than they would receive if donating directly to a public charity.
Across the country, other prominent public officeholders have created private philanthropies to disperse their personal wealth, among them former Democratic New York City mayor and 2020 presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg and Democratic Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker.
Chan Loui said politicians maintaining private charities is neither uncommon nor improper, as long as their nonprofits operate transparently as required by federal law. Charitable contributions can be an avenue for advancing causes politicians care about, she said.
“There’s kind of two ways to have influence. There’s direct political influence, and then there’s this kind of soft power,” Chan Loui said.
In a statement about how it handles donating to groups that might have policy interests in Montana, Gianforte foundation Executive Director Catherine Koenen said that the organization is bound by its non-political 501(c)(3) status and gives only to groups with the same categorization.
“(T)he IRS regulations prohibit a 501(c)(3) organization from being ‘an action organization, i.e., it may not attempt to influence legislation as a substantial part of its activities and it may not participate in any campaign activity for or against political candidates,’” Koenen said. “Specifically, we focus on organizations working on the ground in Montana that advance the foundation’s mission. While most of these organizations are based in Montana, there are others with addresses outside of Montana that work on the ground in Montana.”
Over the course of Gianforte’s political career, the foundation has given to groups that oppose abortion and LGBTQ+ rights. Between 2017 and 2022, the Gianfortes donated a combined $1.7 million to more than a dozen Montana crisis pregnancy centers, which offer resources to pregnant women while trying to dissuade them from obtaining abortions. Other high-profile conservative groups that received money from the Gianfortes in that time period include the Alliance Defending Freedom, Focus on the Family and the Family Research Council, national organizations that advocate for policies that reflect conservative Christian values.
At times, those donations have exposed Gianforte to criticism by political opponents, including the Montana Democratic Party.
The donations reviewed by MTFP for this story do not include Gianforte’s partisan political contributions, nor personal charitable contributions made independently of the foundation. The governor has donated his $124,821 annual state salary to various nonprofits since he took office in 2021, some of which are also grant recipients of the family’s foundation.
Some well-known family foundation donations also predate the period examined by MTFP, including a 2009 donation to the Glendive Dinosaur and Fossil Museum, an eastern Montana establishment that professes the scientifically unsupported Young Earth theory. That support, since lampooned by Democrats, paid for replica T. Rex and Acrocanthosaurus skeletons, according to the Billings Gazette.
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This story was originally published by Montana Free Press and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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