Campus conservatism is student political organizing on American campuses. The most useful thing to say about it is where the money comes from, because that is what distinguishes it from student organizing generally and it is the part that can be checked.
The funding is national, not local
Turning Point USA is the largest organization in this space. Its IRS filings, made under EIN 80-0835023 with a tax-exempt ruling dated July 2014, report:
| Fiscal year | Total revenue | Total expenses |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | $39.8M | $38.4M |
| 2021 | $55.8M | $47.5M |
| 2022 | $80.6M | $71.9M |
| 2023 | $81.7M | $91.4M |
Revenue roughly doubled between 2020 and 2023. Expenses exceeded revenue in FY2023 by about $9.6 million, and reported net assets fell over the same year.
This is a nationally funded organization operating on campuses, not a federation of campus groups. Describing the activity as “digital-native” student organizing, as the previous version of this page did, misses the structure entirely.
Terminology
“Conservatism” appears here as the organizations’ own self-description, not as a label applied by this project.
What was removed
The previous version carried a three-phase chronology from the 2000s and asserted that the movement
was “digital-native”, organized around free speech advocacy, and produced viral content around
campus incidents. None was sourced. The founded field, which read “2000s”, was not a date and has
been removed.
Two of the four recorded connections assert relationships that nothing cited here establishes, and their descriptions now say so.
Sources
- 01.
Internal Revenue Service, via ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer. Turning Point USA Inc., IRS Form 990 filings (EIN 80-0835023). Tax-exempt ruling dated July 2014, registered in Indianapolis, Indiana. Source for the organization's reported financials: total revenue of $39.8M in FY2020, $55.8M in FY2021, $80.6M in FY2022 and $81.7M in FY2023, against expenses of $91.4M in FY2023. Figures retrieved through the ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer API against the organization's own Form 990 filings; the EIN was checked against the filer's name and address.
- 02.
Hemmer, N. (2016). Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. University of Pennsylvania Press. Cited for the longer institutional pattern this organizing sits within — nationally funded infrastructure built to reach an audience directly. Metadata confirmed against the Crossref record for the DOI.