Torches at High Noon: A Fog Machine, Power Lines, An Angry Extra and Brigham Young’s Electric Boogaloo

[Doctor Scratch]

Viewership for Episode 1 = 23K views
Viewership for Episode 2 = 5.2K views

There is just no way they are going to sustain interest in this project for--what, a year and a half??

Who wants to wager a guess as to the view count for Episode 3? Do you think it'll make it to 3K? 2.5K?

Episode 3 has 3.7K views, so that represents a rough decrease of ~1,500 views compared to Episode 2.

Episode 4 saw a slight uptick in viewer numbers, but Episode 5 is currently at.... 2.8K. So it has the lowest total viewership (relative to the other episodes) so far. The downward trend continues.

[Marcus]

I still think, though, that a significant portion of the Bowdlerizing Brigham project's funding has come from Interpreter. The Afore can clarify for us if that's not true.

He’ll just make another disingenuous hyperbolic post that asking for this information is akin to asking for his family’s complete financial situation.

Yes, with the emphasis on hyperbole, his go-to strategy.

It's worth noting that if you go to any of the websites related to the movies the Afore is involved with and click the "donate" button, you are taken to a form identifying your donation as going to the Interpreter.

For example the site "the Witnesses Initiative" has a donate button for 'becoming Brigham', 'witnesses', 6 days in August,' and 'undaunted witnesses.'

If you click that button, you see this:

Donate to

The Interpreter Foundation

Your donation will help The Interpreter Foundation bring Six Days in August to the screen (or whatever you specify below).

• Six Days in August film

• Witnesses film

• General Interpreter Foundation Operations

https://witnessesfilm.com/

It's not a donation to Redbrick Filmworks, as that is, in my opinion, the for-profit company Interpreter is hiring to make its movies. It's utterly facile for the Afore to insist he's paid by and has his expenses covered by Redbrick Filmworks, and that no Interpreter money makes its way into his pockets.

In fact, one could argue that the ethical thing to do would be to not be involved in such a way that he would be paid by or reimbursed by Redbrick at all, to avoid the appearance that his Foundation's donations are going to his personal benefit.

[Marcus]

...In fact, one could argue that the ethical thing to do would be to not be involved in such a way that he would be paid by or reimbursed by Redbrick at all, to avoid the appearance that his Foundation's donations are going to his personal benefit.

A little more on this issue. I am on a board of a non-profit that provides a specific sport opportunity to school-aged children and teenagers. It's not a sport typically provided by schools like basketball or football because it's very specialized, so schools typically contract with non-profits that provide the sport practice location, care for the equipment, and organize trips for students to competition venues, including transportation of the equipment. Our non-profit president liaises with the schools to provide the coaching, training, traveling, and care of both privately owned and publicly held equipment, so he is paid a salary out of donations. We spent a considerable amount of time making sure we clearly followed the irs rules about conflict of interest and private inurement, as summarized here:

...In working with thousands of nonprofit startups over the years, one of the most frequent challenges we face when working with clients is conflict-of-interest concerns. New 501(c)(3) organizations are particularly vulnerable to this for a number of reasons, chief among them being the relative concentration of control in the early years. Conflict-of-interest is often hard to avoid in these situations, and is even occasionally advantageous to maintain, while the organization is getting up and running. What you have to avoid at all costs, however, is allowing conflict-of-interest to devolve into inurement and/or private benefit.

Definition of Inurement

The term inurement is defined as an insider (an officer, director, key employee, or anyone related to those individuals) in a nonprofit unfairly benefiting from a nonprofit’s resources by virtue of position. In other words, an abuse of power resulting in personal gain from a nonprofit’s assets. The most common offenders tend to be nonprofit employees who also hold board seats, but can extend to any board position or employee.

...Inurement can be found in both public charities and private foundations...Private foundations, on the other hand, aren’t held to the same standards of arms-length dealing due the allowance for close control, even by members of the same family. As a result, the IRS considers officers, directors, and significant contributors of a private foundation to be disqualified persons. Such individuals are barred from employment within the organization, except for a limited ability to provide professional services for a reasonable fee (legal, accounting, investments, etc.). Ironically, the IRS calls these personal services, though the phrase is defined to mean what is typically credentialed professional work...

https://www.501c3.org/dangers-of-nonpro ... e-benefit/

[I Have Questions]

He’ll just make another disingenuous hyperbolic post that asking for this information is akin to asking for his family’s complete financial situation.

Yes, with the emphasis on hyperbole, his go-to strategy.

It's worth noting that if you go to any of the websites related to the movies the Afore is involved with and click the "donate" button, you are taken to a form identifying your donation as going to the Interpreter.

For example the site "the Witnesses Initiative" has a donate button for 'becoming Brigham', 'witnesses', 6 days in August,' and 'undaunted witnesses.'

If you click that button, you see this:

Donate to

The Interpreter Foundation

Your donation will help The Interpreter Foundation bring Six Days in August to the screen (or whatever you specify below).

• Six Days in August film

• Witnesses film

• General Interpreter Foundation Operations

https://witnessesfilm.com/

It's not a donation to Redbrick Filmworks, as that is, in my opinion, the for-profit company Interpreter is hiring to make its movies. It's utterly facile for the Afore to insist he's paid by and has his expenses covered by Redbrick Filmworks, and that no Interpreter money makes its way into his pockets.

In fact, one could argue that the ethical thing to do would be to not be involved in such a way that he would be paid by or reimbursed by Redbrick at all, to avoid the appearance that his Foundation's donations are going to his personal benefit.

He's still soliciting donations for projects that have long since finished?

[Marcus]

Yes, with the emphasis on hyperbole, his go-to strategy.

It's worth noting that if you go to any of the websites related to the movies the Afore is involved with and click the "donate" button, you are taken to a form identifying your donation as going to the Interpreter.

For example the site "the Witnesses Initiative" has a donate button for 'becoming Brigham', 'witnesses', 6 days in August,' and 'undaunted witnesses.'

If you click that button, you see this:


It's not a donation to Redbrick Filmworks, as that is, in my opinion, the for-profit company Interpreter is hiring to make its movies. It's utterly facile for the Afore to insist he's paid by and has his expenses covered by Redbrick Filmworks, and that no Interpreter money makes its way into his pockets.

In fact, one could argue that the ethical thing to do would be to not be involved in such a way that he would be paid by or reimbursed by Redbrick at all, to avoid the appearance that his Foundation's donations are going to his personal benefit.

He's still soliciting donations for projects that have long since finished?

Lol. I'm sure there is very small print, a la LDS church policy, that the Interpreter ultimately reserves the right to use the donation however they see fit.

[Doctor Scratch]

I think there is a difference between “profiting” and “benefiting.” The trouble is that the Afore understands that there is a difference, too, and he has been deliberately dishonest about the benefits he’s gained. If he had simply said, “I’m so grateful for our generous donors who make our work possible”—or something in that vein—then no problem. But he just *had* to toss in this silly detail about how “my wife and I are donors!”

Look: isn’t it good enough that he gets donors to pay up so that he can do his hobbies for free? No, apparently not! He has to create this image of himself as some kind of self-sacrificing martyr: “Oh, woe is me, traveling for free to Iowa and choking down microwaved pizza!”

But at the end of the day, whatever he pitched in wound up getting spent *on him,* and now he has made up additional fibs (“it’s not Interpreter! It’s Redbrick!) in an effort to cover it up yet again. Why not just express gratitude that donors support him in pursuing these projects, and that, yes, he personally benefits, because these are passions/hobbies for him?

Well, now the films’ viewership is tanking. Is that karma? It may very well be.

[drumdude]

They apparently pay money for typesetting.

[Doctor Scratch]

They apparently pay money for typesetting.

Well of course. The President has to be sure that the text in his festschrift is nice and tidy.

[Tom]

It's worth noting that if you go to any of the websites related to the movies the Afore is involved with and click the "donate" button, you are taken to a form identifying your donation as going to the Interpreter.

For example the site "the Witnesses Initiative" has a donate button for 'becoming Brigham', 'witnesses', 6 days in August,' and 'undaunted witnesses.'

If you click that button, you see this:

Donate to

The Interpreter Foundation

Your donation will help The Interpreter Foundation bring Six Days in August to the screen (or whatever you specify below).

• Six Days in August film

• Witnesses film

• General Interpreter Foundation Operations

https://witnessesfilm.com/

Excellent observation. I am surprised that the Becoming Brigham website provides those identical three options after you click the yellow Donate button at the top of the site’s homepage and then click the yellow Donate button on a popup labeled “Donate to Becoming Brigham Project.” Inexplicably, there’s no option to donate to the Becoming Brigham project. What’s going on here?

[Doctor Scratch]

It's probably just the usual incompetence. But then again, it also leaves room for speculation--i.e., it could be that this is an attempt to further cover up the fact that the President's travel, lodging, and food were paid for using donations to Interpreter.