Nearly all of the emergency aid grants we disbursed were for emergency food and housing needs. In the U.S. and most of the world, there are large gaps in the social safety net programs that help protect those with urgent needs related to economic or health crises.  Over the years, our emergency aid program has evolved to help fill those gaps as those raised in cults often lack the resources and social support structures that others take for granted.  Currently we are meeting only a tiny percentage of the vast need and in most cases the financial assistance we are able to provide is very limited but fortunately we have been able to help a few people.

In March 2021, Safe Passage Foundation borrowed $7600 at an annual interest rate of 2.75% through the COVID-19 Economic Injury Disaster Loan program administered by the U.S. Small Business Administration.  The availability of these funds has enabled us to increase our operating reserves so we are more financially stable and able to provide emergency assistance faster.  In September 2022, Safe Passage Foundation purchased $3000 in Series I savings bonds with an interest rate of 9.48% for the first 6 months and 6.89% for the second 6 months.  We expect the interest earned on these bonds will help offset the interest cost of the EIDL.  

Currently, nearly all of the Safe Passage Foundation operating expenses (which average about $150/month) are paid directly by our corporate sponsor, MadLab so the only operating expenses in recent years are the credit card donation transaction processing fees.  For the current fiscal year, those fees totaled $104 or about 1.44% of the $7200 in donations received.  

FY 2023 interim Statement of Financial Activities

• Safe Passage Foundation Annual Financial Report FY 2019 (April 1, 2018 to March 31, 2019)
• Safe Passage Foundation Monthly Financial Report as of September 30, 2019 (April 1, 2019 to September 30, 2019)

This fiscal year (which began April 1, 2019 and ends on March 31, 2020), we received $5150 in donations, disbursed 3 $500 scholarship grants and 13 Emergency Aid Fund grants averaging $315 each.  

Donations increased 10x in FY 2019

Safe Passage Foundation received $28,146 in donations in fiscal year 2019 compared to $2820 the previous year.

Scholarships

Thanks to the huge increase in donations, Safe Passage Foundation resurrected its scholarship program and awarded 22 scholarship grants (averaging $550 each) in fiscal year 2019.

Emergency Aid

In fiscal year 2019, Safe Passage Foundation disbursed 29 Emergency Aid Fund grants averaging $364 each. The grants disbursed helped provide food, housing/shelter, medical care and travel/transportation to SPF clients who were raised in cults and had urgent needs after exhausting all other available resources.

Overhead Expenses

Safe Passage Foundation has no paid staff and minimal overhead expenses. All our overhead and operating expenses that are not direct program costs are currently covered by our corporate sponsor, MadLab (founded by former SPF director Robert Gentel) so that other donors can be assured that 100% of their donations will go directly to scholarship and emergency aid grants. In fiscal year 2019, we reduced average monthly operating expenses by about 8% compared to the previous year. Over the first 5 months of fiscal year 2020, we reduced average monthly operating expenses by about 52% (from $166 per month to $79 per month).

In addition to our corporate sponsorship from MadLab, some of our overhead expenses are also covered by nonprofit discounts from online accounting software provider Xero and donations and discounts from various providers via TechSoup.  

Facebook and Paypal also cover transaction processing costs for donations to Safe Passage Foundation on Facebook or via the PayPal Giving Fund. 

The recipient of the scholarship, who has requested to remain anonymous, impressed us with her incredible accomplishments, resilience and unwavering commitment despite the many obstacles she faced. Here is part of her story from her application:

I left the cult in 2010. I didn’t know how to drive. I only had a GED. I couldn’t read fluently till I was 18 years old and could hardly read at all by the age of 12, those in the cult told me it was okay because I was dyslexic. I struggled for the last 8 years to get my associates (I graduated with honors, and currently hold a 3.68 GPA), get my drivers license, build new good friendships and learn to trust people again. I’m now 30. But I’ve struggled quite a lot financially through nursing school. I’m alone. I only have one relative who lives in the US and they live in a different city than me. During this Christmas vacation while my classmates are getting manicures and pedicures and relaxing before the next big semester and state boards, I’m literally picking up 14 hour shifts over my winter break hoping to make enough so that hopefully I won’t have to work too many days during the last semester of nursing, because all my instructors and classmates are telling me that the last semester it is too hard to work during this portion and then the preceptorship. But I have no choice. I picked up 85 hours of work over the next fifteen days even though all I need is a good night sleep and a vacation. And I applied for 51 scholarships, I haven’t heard back from anyone. My car is too old to make the trip to Phoenix to see my sister so she is going to drive down here and pick me up so I can have a few days of Christmas at least. I know all this will be over soon. I’ll graduate in May, pass the NCLEX in July and be working at a nice hospital by August, but I am so desperate now and overwhelmed by my need for help.

This promising future nurse received a $1000 nursing scholarship funded by NurseRecruiter and an additional $500 scholarship grant from the Julia McNeil Memorial Scholarship program. We are delighted to have been able to make a small contribution to help her become a nurse and we hope that she is the first of many future nurses we are able to help.

If you or or someone you know was raised in a cult and wants to become a nurse, please let them know about our nursing scholarship.  

In August, a generous donor made a $10,000 donation dedicated to our scholarship program in memory of Safe Passage Foundation founder Julia McNeil. Thanks to our generous supporters, this year we have been able to disburse 21 Emergency Aid Fund grants totaling over $8100.   Nearly all our Emergency Aid Fund grants this year were disbursed to provide food and shelter to adults born or raised in cults as well as to children of those raised in cults. It is heartbreaking how close to being homeless many of us are but we are happy that we were able to prevent it in a few cases.

I would literally be without a home without you guys, [I] can’t thank y’all enough.  Thanks very much SPF for having made sure I had a house and food these last months.   – Message from an SPF client. November 3, 2018.

We were also able to revive the scholarship program.  In August, we disbursed 11 $500 scholarship grants and we plan to disburse more next semester.    We have yet to receive any applicants for our nursing scholarship funded by NurseRecruiter.  If you know someone raised in a cult who wants to become a nurse, please let them know about our nursing scholarship.

How You Can Help

None of our success this year would have been possible without help from our donors, volunteers and supporters who have been very generous with their time and money.  To keep the momentum going we need your help.  If you are interested in volunteering, please contact us and check back for more specific volunteer opportunities we’ll post here and elsewhere.

If you are interested in fundraising, one of the best ways you can help is to start a Facebook fundraiser benefitting Safe Passage Foundation.  If you need ideas, here are some previous successful Facebook fundraisers:

• Providing education & emergency aid for people leaving abusive cults
• Juliana’s birthday fundraiser for Safe Passage Foundation

Here our latest financial reports.  As is evident, we now run a very lean and efficient operation but we are absolutely committed to making it even more efficient.  Our company sponsor, MadLab LLC (founded by directors Robert Gentel and Peter Frouman) funds all the operational costs so other donors can rest assured that 100% of their donations will go directly to providing scholarships, emergency aid and other assistance to people raised in cults.

• Month to date Statement of Financial Activities – November 12, 2018
• Year to date Statement of Financial Activities – November 12, 2018
• Statement of Cash Flows – November 12, 2018
• Balance sheet – November 12, 2018

Our operating expenses have averaged about $172 per month and about 23% of donations received. While the percentage of donations spent on operating expenses may seem high, we expect it to decrease significantly as donations increase and we are committed to reducing overhead and maximizing operational efficiency. Our corporate sponsor, MadLab LLC (founded by director Robert Gentel), has pledged to cover all operating expenses so other donors can be assured that 100% of their donations will go directly to providing resources and support to those raised in cults.

During the fiscal year that ended on March 31, 2018, Safe Passage Foundation was mostly inactive and did not disburse any grants. As the fiscal year ended, we started working on reviving Safe Passage Foundation and during the current fiscal year (which began April 1, 2018), have disbursed $975 in emergency aid grants.

Have a look at our books, below you will find the yearly report for the fiscal year ending March 31 as well as the monthly reports for April and May since. Going forward we will continue to publish our books regularly.

SPF Annual Financial Report March 31, 2018

SPF Monthly Financial Report, April, May 2018

Anna will start by developing a network of support resources that will be launching soon for people who are leaving or have left cults, to provide them with a safety net and help navigating life outside the cult. Whisper Wind has volunteered to lead our peer-to-peer support, serving as a point person for triaging support requests and organizing the delivery of emergency aid.

Our team of volunteers do everything in their spare time, and we can use your help too! Contact us if you have time to volunteer!

Many have asked for more visibility into the work Safe Passage Foundation does and the people SPF has helped, which is a fair question when we are asking you for your donations, so when we are able we will make our work public and today we are sharing a thank you note from Rob McClelland, 42, who SPF was able to help through our Emergency Aid Fund.

“I would like to thank Safe Passage Foundation for their generosity. Sometime ago I broke my foot in several places and was unable to work. I did not have enough money to pay the doctor bills along with rent. Safe Passage Foundation gave me financial support which helped me make it through this difficult time when I was unable to help myself. Their work is very important in helping people feel and know there are others that care in time of need.”

If you can, please consider donating to our emergency aid fund, 100% of which goes directly to people who need our support with no operating costs or overhead. Our sponsors cover all our operating costs so every cent you can donate goes right to the people who need it.

Today, we are proud to announce that NurseRecruiter.com (founded by SPF director Robert Gentel) has committed $1000/year to help fund a new Safe Passage Foundation scholarship grant for nursing majors.

To apply for the nursing scholarship, please visit the Julia McNeil Memorial Scholarship page and press the Apply button. The eligibility requirements for the nursing scholarship are the same as those for our other scholarships with the additional requirement of being enrolled in or admitted to a nursing degree program.  We will also consider applicants enrolled in a pre-nursing program if they can demonstrate that they are committed to enrolling in nursing school and becoming a nurse.  If you wish to apply as a pre-nursing student, please complete the application and then use our contact form to send us a brief personal statement about your plans to become a nurse and enroll in nursing school.

When approaching prospective donors it is not enough that your organization has good intentions, good people and good plans. You are supposed to! It needs a proven track record of being able to accomplish its plans, a proven track record of being able to execute. The Safe Passage Foundation has been able to do important and valuable work with its scholarship and emergency aid fund when it has had the resources but there are certain economies of scale that are needed to sustain this, and in the last year Safe Passage Foundation was only able to raise roughly $1500, which is just not enough to make a meaningful difference. I have been appointed as SPF Coordinator till the end of the year to try to change this and to reinvigorate SPF and its important work for our community.

Here is my plan on how we are going to do this together:

First of all, it is important to recognize that the main reason that we haven’t been able to do more is that there is only so much that a handful of people (last year it was the bare minimum of 3 people needed to keep the organization alive) can do alone, volunteering in their spare time. And even with the unacceptable level of activity SPF has had, there really isn’t any other greater effort around for our peers, which is behind my personal decision to rally behind it for all the projects I work on. A critical part of this plan will be the organization’s ability to attract others to collaborate together on shared goals so that we can work together to get projects off the ground that we haven’t yet been able to do individually.

The Safe Passage Foundation is actively working on growing our team of volunteers and have the following people to announce who will be joining us, with more to be announced in the very near future. Today we can announce that Steven Levithan and Mariana Mari, both trusted members of our community with a known history of sharing our goals, are joining the SPF board. The SPF Board will vote periodically on SPF leadership and structure, and is also to approve any significant changes to spending resource allocation. It will consist of:

• Peter Frouman
• Sarafina Gill
• Robert Gentel
• Mariana Mari
• Steven Levithan

We are also happy to announce that Natacha Tormey has volunteered to help with project coordination and Sharon Borjas with our blog and social media accounts. Many others have approached us to help and we expect to be able to announce new team members in the next days. Here is our organization so far:

Areas of Responsibility

SPF Coordinator: Robert Gentel

• Setting goals and priorities
• Messaging and direction
• Project Coordinator: Natacha Tormey

Administration: Peter Frouman

• Organization administration
• Finances
• Fund Disbursements
• Websites/Server Administration

Support:  Sarafina Gill

• Emergency Aid
• Support Network

Outreach: Mariana Mari

• Communication
• PR/Media: Natacha Tormey
• Blogs and Social Media: Sharon Borjas
• Fundraising

I also think it is important to set goals and try to commit to them. It puts our reputations on the line and commits us to executing on them. My personal goal is to 10x SPF this year. That is, I am committing to doing whatever it takes to help SPF raise ten times the amount it did last year, meaning we have an initial goal of $15,000 that we will be raising by the end of the year and here are some specifics about how we are going to do this:

1. We are going to commit to ruthless efficiency. This is something SPF has always done, with very minimal operating costs that mainly consist of bank fees and a handful of online services like hosting. But we don’t want anyone to donate $25 and have it go toward hosting fees so we are committing to having every cent we receive from public donations go toward our core funds. To achieve this, MadLab.com (a company founded by SPF director Robert Gentel) has agreed to sponsor SPF to help cover the current operating costs of the foundation and to provide various technical and marketing services. We are also working on cutting operational overhead costs to the bare minimum, making sure that the board is required to vote on any future significant cost increases and creating an organizational culture that embraces frugality as a core principle.
2. We are going to commit to ruthless transparency. This too is something SPF has always wanted and because we have repeatedly heard from the community that they would like more insight into the work that SPF does we are going to commit to it as not just a “nice to have” but as a “must have”. SPF’s financial year starts in a few days (April) so there is no better time to start than now. From now on SPF books will public and will be published monthly on our blog. We will also redouble our efforts to communicate about the work that we do and who is involved in it. Many have told us that if they had just known more they would have contributed, and we have taken this to heart and some of the new team members who have volunteered will be dedicated toward doing so.

We are moving very fast and will have more to announce in the next few days, including more about our core projects that we are starting this year and the people who will lead them. We can’t do this without you, so please help however you can whether that is through donations, volunteering your time, and helping to get out the word. We will post weekly updates about where we are in our fundraising and our projects so stay tuned.

Special thanks to:

• Alois Vanlangenaeker, chef of Il San Pietro
• Norbert Niederkofler from Relais & Châteaux Hotel
• Vito Cinque, Agostino Piccolo, Andrea Zana and all the wonderful people at Il San Pietro
• Juliana Buhring
• Relais & Châteaux Hotel
• BMW Gourmet Festival
• Blancpain

This month, Safe Passage Foundation will be awarding 10 $500 college scholarship grants to individuals born and/or raised in cults. In January 2014, we also awarded 3 $500 scholarship grants. The 13 $500 grants SPF will award in 2014 is more than triple the originally planned amount of 4 $500 grants.

Do you know someone born and/or raised in a cult who could use some help paying for college? If so, please encourage them to apply for a Julia McNeil Memorial Scholarship grant from Safe Passage Foundation.

If you would like to help expand the scholarship program and enable SPF to award even more scholarship grants in 2015, please consider donating to Safe Passage Foundation. We accept donations by credit card, check and Paypal and we even accept Bitcoin.

In April 2014, he became ill and died in Yerevan, Armenia.

Safe Passage Foundation is raising funds to help Stacy’s family bring him home from Armenia and lay him to rest.

Safe Passage Foundation has made an Emergency Aid Fund grant of $250 to Rugely’s relatives to help cover the estimated $15000 in costs. With your support, we can make additional grants to cover more of the costs. As of May 19, 2014, a total of $4610 has been raised (including $4145 raised by Rugely’s relatives on GiveForward).

Your donation to the Stacey Paul Rugely Memorial Fund at Safe Passage Foundation is tax deductible to the extent permitted by law and 100% of your donation will go to funding an Emergency Aid Grant to help cover the costs of bringing Stacy home from Armenia and laying him to rest.

If you can, please make a donation today.

Message from Stacy’s family

Where do you go when earth gets too small for you? When life suffocates you? When you cannot breathe? When even as an infant with the limitations of youth and illness, you just had to explore the contours of your periphery to see what lies beyond? You understood that life was something to be experienced, not simply lived.The truth is, Stacy was born to a family of travelers and wanderers. Our family dropped out of society in the late Sixties to find the true meaning of life. As a result, we were all born overseas in Europe and in Africa as missionaries helping others. We experienced the world up close and personal. And we loved it! But as we each found our own way back to society, back home to America, and started building our own lives, Stacy continued to roam. Whatever money he managed to earn was spent immediately on his next travel adventures. A modern-day Marco Polo, Stacy would always return with tales of the exotic. A scholar and an educator, Stacy was happiest when documenting his trips and expounding on his interactions with the strange and wonderful people he met on his journeys.He fell in love in Armenia. He fell in Yerevan. The U.S. State Department and the local hospital moved quickly and expertly. He is embalmed and is ready to be transported home. This fund drive will pay for the expenses his death incurred:

1. Medical examiner and hospital fees for caring for Stacy’s body and preparing him with a casket fit for travel
2. Airline transport fees for flying Stacy home
3. Local consular and inter-agency fees for paperwork and legal processing
4. Shipping Stacy’s personal effects home via separate transport (required by law)
5. Funeral and crematory services to lay our baby brother and son to rest and set him free to roam again.

Your contributions will enable us to do so. From the bottom of our hearts, we thank you.

For those of you already familiar with SPF’s work (and in a hurry to push buttons), click here to donate to our cause using Bitcoin.

If you’re like me, you’ve heard a great deal about Bitcoin in the news and you have questions. Lots of questions. Check out the Frequently Asked Questions section of the Bitcoin website.

For the uninitiated, SPF is a not-for-profit 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization that provides resources, support, and advocacy for youth raised in restrictive, isolated, or high-demand communities, often referred to as “cults” by society at large.

SPF is devoted to providing resources, support and advocacy addressing both the immediate and long-term needs of former and current children raised in cults while raising public awareness of the issues confronting them. Click here to learn more about what Safe Passage Foundation does.

Try using Bitcoin and give to a good cause. If you’re a lovable Luddite but you’d like to contribute to SPF’s long-term goal of world domination, click here to use a regular old credit card. Whatever your chosen method, and whatever amount you can afford to give, we thank you kindly for your contribution.

Safe Passage Foundation was recently contacted by several abuse survivors who were dismayed to learn that the man who sexually assaulted them when they were children would be touring the United States and raising money (including on Kickstarter) to produce a new album.

On behalf of these survivors, and in consideration of the extensively documented abuse Jeremy Spencer has been credibly accused of, Safe Passage Foundation created a petition calling for the cancellation of this tour and fundraiser.

Warning: The remainder of this article contains graphic descriptions of child abuse and may be disturbing for some readers.

More than 300 people signed the petition and a number of people contacted the organizers and supporters of the tour to ask them to take a stand against child abuse.   A few days later, we were pleased to learn that both the tour and the Kickstarter fundraiser had been cancelled. While we don’t yet know if our petition and calls to the venues had anything to do with the cancellation of the tour and the fundraiser (a report by the Long Beach Press-Telegram indicated the tour was cancelled due to “unspecified health reasons”),  we would like to think that the organizers and supporters of the tour heeded our call to take a stand against child abuse.

Jeremy Spencer was a founding member of Fleetwood Mac and in 1971 left the band to join the Children of God (now known as The Family International) where systemic sexual abuse of minors took place.   For nearly 43 years, Jeremy Spencer has been a loyal member of a religious cult founded and run by child molesters. During that time, he has fully committed himself and his artistic talents to benefit and support an organization that has consistently demonstrated a callous disregard for the basic human rights of children.    His abuse of children and participation in the production and distribution of child pornography has been well documented.  More information about Jeremy Spencer can he found on the Jeremy Spencer page at xFamily.org, a collaboratively edited encyclopedia about The Family International/Children of God cult.

Former Safe Passage Foundation director Celeste Jones had this to say about Spencer:

I find it shameful that after all these years Jeremy Spencer has still not apologized to myself or to the other children he sexually abused while part of the Children of God nor has he renounced them. I would not support his efforts financially to send a clear message to those who think that they have evaded the law that crimes against innocent children will not be condoned or tolerated.

— Celeste Jones, co-author of “Not Without My Sister” (Harper-Collins, 2007)

We also asked Davida Kelley, another survivor of horrific child abuse by Jeremy Spencer, for her memories of him and she emailed us this heartbreaking statement about one of her first experiences with Spencer:

I was 7 years old when I met Jeremy Spencer in the secluded compound in Manila… My first memories with ‘Uncle Dada Jeremy’ (as we were told to refer to him) were the disturbing ‘music sessions’ I was made to take with him where he taught me to play guitar chords and harmonize to melodies that he re-created from old Elvis and Beatles songs (which he said HE wrote!).  Being forced into submission and punishment for any contrary attitude was a typical scenario constantly enforced on us young people and any other person who dared to question or defy the “believe, obey and cooperate as told” law which The Family always strictly  enforced and this whole time Jeremy Spencer was always making sure to remind me that I was “a pathetic, disgusting and stupid child and I would never be a singer or musician and I had absolutely no talent and would never become to much of anything ever! When I eventually did exceptionally well at a certain music session with him after  I was then “rewarded” by getting to have sex with him in some special one on one “love up time”  to ‘reward’ me for being a cooperative music student in his class that day! … I was taken to a secluded room.. where I was forced to perform oral sex in which I would gag on his penis until I vomited in my mouth and almost suffocated then I had to sit on his genitals and grind on them and improvise penetration until he had another orgasm and lie there while he violated me with his tongue and fingers.  Now this was only one of the first of many countless incidents…  He also used to love to beat my baby sisters; mostly my youngest who was a 2 year old at the time until she couldn’t walk and was black and blue.  I counted him beating her almost senseless 10 times repeatedly as a 2 year old toddler while she screamed and screamed as he locked himself in a bathroom with her and then he came out smacking and licking his lips with the pleasure he had just experienced from beating a child too young for him to sexually molest all because she “deserved” that for “pouting” before his beating because she had a “bad attitude” and asked for a hug from me! 

We know it is very difficult for abuse survivors to speak publicly about such traumatic experiences and we commend Davida and Celeste for their courage in doing so.

As one of the signers of the petition noted: ” no person should have to see their oppressor being celebrated.”  Speaking out and taking a stand against child abuse is important because it helps remove the stigma and shame some survivors experience to where it belongs: with the abusers who violated their basic human rights.   Getting the public to take a stand against child abuse and stop supporting a celebrity child abuser who has so far escaped justice may seem like a small victory but it is a victory nonetheless.

The Safe Passage Foundation was founded by people who knew all too well what this burden could be like to bear. And it is run by volunteers who know more than any why we have to do what we do: because there’s often nobody else to help when one’s family and support system turns on you.

Many of us know people who didn’t make it. Many of us know those who did, despite the odds they had against them. And we are calling on others like them who have survived to help us help our peers who are struggling right now.

We need your help with our goals of providing college scholarships and emergency financial aid to those who need it right now. We need help with everything from fundraising and outreach to graphic design and writing. There’s certainly something you can help with and it doesn’t need to take any more of your time than you can give.

For many who we are trying to help there is just nobody else they can call on. It’s on us to make a difference. Let’s do this together! Contact SPF today and join us in our efforts.

Please consider donating to Safe Passage Foundation’s scholarship fund and please also help us spread the word about our work. Please like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter, and +1 Safe Passage on Google+ and let your friends know about the scholarship fundraiser!

• That minors within cults or high demand organizations are protected from abuse and exploitation and that their rights are respected and protected.
• That those who choose to leave a cult or high demand organization have a support structure throughout the transitional period.
• That those who violate children’s human rights are held accountable for their crimes and face justice

Safe Passage Foundation has adopted the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child as the statement of its guiding philosophy.