Introduction
The Organization, What Happened, and What It Means
Effective March 2024, Nullify Abortion as a nonprofit corporation was dissolved. I’m going to explain why we made this decision and what it means for Nullify Abortion going forward.
In Michigan, as with many other states, nonprofits are formed by incorporating as a nonprofit corporation through the Licensing and Regulatory Affairs department (LARA). As an incorporated nonprofit, there are regular filings which must be made every year with LARA. What many don’t realize (seriously, many don’t realize this), you can operate a nonprofit exclusively at the state level and never get 501(c)3 or 501(c)4 status at the federal level. The downside is that any money donated isn’t tax deductible with the federal government, and you don’t qualify for most nonprofit grants and discounts. As I’ll explain in a moment, this wasn’t a big deal for us.
For those looking for the abbreviated version: Nullify Abortion, as you’ve known it, will largely be unchanged. The website will continue to exist, as will our social media pages. If you’re curious as to why we made this decision and what the future holds, please hang tight.
But Why?!
If we’re being honest, Nullify Abortion has been primarily a one-person social media operation and blog operating on a negative budget. The website, the graphics, the content, everything was paid for either by me, Matthew, or my parents. When we initially incorporated as a nonprofit, we had the idea of forming a 501(c)4 to engage in local politics. However, we had several family crises, and I was working 50-60 hours a week. I was also disconnected from a local church interested in doing this mission. This wasn’t feasible. Instead, I did what I could do: run a Facebook page and make graphics and memes. I did that pretty well, considering we were shadow banned for most of the last 10 years.
Health
In 2021, I came down with a bad case of COVID-19. I was out of work for two months and developed complications from COVID which turned my life upside down. While this has given me lots of spare time, the high-octane, stress-filled life of political engagement is not something I am physically capable of doing anymore. For much of the last three years, I’ve barely been able to do basic tasks around the home. I have had to learn to serve God in ways which are compatible with my current capabilities.
Money
Nullify Abortion as a nonprofit never asked for donations. Prior to incorporating, we received a single donation of $100, for which I am grateful. However, our yearly expenses are as follows:
- Web Hosting: $10 * 12 = $120
- Adobe Subscription: $17 * 12 = $204
- ChatGPT (this is an accessibility tool for me): $20 * 12 = $240
- Secure Email & Cloud Drive Services: $290
- Social Media Management Services: $15 * 12 = $180
- Other Website Expenses: $290
Total Annual Expenses: $1324
This total doesn’t include any expenses for developing marketing material. While we did try near the end to ask for donations, it was a little too late. I was never a fan of asking for money without offering something in return. I floated the idea of an online store, but we were not able to reach a consensus. Having not worked since 2021, still waiting on social security, no disability, my parents on a fixed income, and the worsening economy, it wasn’t viable to continue as-is.
Too Much Overhead
At the end of the day, 99.99 percent of Nullify Abortion’s daily operations were being handled by me. This was very difficult to do given my disabilities, and even harder considering we had no funding, and I have no job to pay someone to do it (or pay what we were doing). In addition, for legal compliance, we had to have regular board meetings, and one of our board members recently moved out of state (which was okay, legally speaking, but caused logistic issues). Then we had annual reports, and then there are issues with tracking funds spent even though the money being spent was our personal money. And then, even though everything was being operated by me, to do anything, our bylaws required me to convene a board meeting and then get consensus from the board. And that could be changed by rewriting the bylaws.
So what?
At that point… why? What’s the point? That was the question we finally concluded. We could do this same thing without all the oversight that comes with a nonprofit, considering we’re not even soliciting donations. We had no bank account. We hadn’t raised a single dollar. It was just a waste of time and energy. To write a blog and advocate for the abolition of abortion, we don’t need the state’s rubberstamp. In fact, we could care less whether the state recognizes our existence.
So, we made the decision to dissolve the nonprofit corporation, and our dissolution was granted at the beginning of March.
What’s Next?
Regarding the future, there is a future for Nullify Abortion. Right now, I’m trying to get my bearings. Honestly, there is some decompression involved. I had started another project, America, Humble Yourselves & Pray (HumblePray.com) prior to the dissolution. This was originally branded as FYRE.IS, and you can see I started premiering my articles there first. Since we did that with other authors in the past, it made sense to do it with my own work and retain full rights to them and monetize them apart from Nullify Abortion. It allowed me to double dip, basically, creating content for two places at once.
Social Media
Those on Facebook will notice our social media has pretty much died. That’s because the deal we had with our social media management service expired, and we couldn’t get them to renew the deal we had. The only way I was able to keep up with so much content so often was by using a third-party tool to schedule and repeat content. However, it was overly saturated and got stale. I wasn’t updating it enough, and I think engagement started to slip.
The goal is to post infrequently for the time being and, in the next month or so, get a new social media setup.
HumblePray Integration
America, Humble Yourselves & Pray is honestly the logical step forward, in my mind, to abolishing abortion. The abolition of abortion requires a broader societal transformation. Reforming our communities and preaching the gospel is the best long-term solution to end abortion permanently. Raising up the next generation of abolitionists is essential. It’s not in place of abolition, it’s merely a logical foundation to abolishing abortion. We’ve touched on this in a few of our previous articles, but we’ll get more into it soon.
Pray for Me
Going forward, I have a lot to do and still very little capacity to do it. Nullify Abortion has, from the beginning, been me. If you’ve ever read a social media post, an article, seen an image with our watermark, or a meme with our name on it, any time in the last decade, that was probably me, with the exception of a few volunteers from time to time, of whom I’m very grateful.
Thank you for your time, and God bless.
Housekeeping
Note, our website is expansive and covers 10 years of content. Old blog posts will not be revised. Pages reflecting the current nature of the organization may take time to properly update.
