At a certain place on the Internet that will remain deservedly nameless, it’s often claimed that my involvement with Latter-day Saint apologetics—and, specifically, with the Interpreter Foundation—funds an opulent lifestyle for me of global travel, lounging poolside at upscale hotels and resorts, and endless high-end dining. All of which, the accusation goes, is billed directly to the Interpreter Foundation’s tab — and, thus, paid for by the Foundation’s gullible donors, who are being scammed. One curiously hostile individual is particularly responsible for the accusations, but he’s attracted a small chorus of enthusiastic backers.
To the best of my knowledge, I’ve never met any of these anonymous accusers. And it’s manifestly clear that they have no direct knowledge of either my personal finances or those of the Interpreter Foundation.
However, since these accusations are public and incessant, I think it advisable, at least this once, to publicly contradict them. Hence the following:
Do you receive regular payments from the Interpreter Foundation?
No. Nor do any members of my family. In any form. My wife and I are unpaid volunteers.
Do you receive payment for your involvement in the Interpreter Foundation’s film projects?
No. Nor do any members of my family. In any form, except (very occasionally) to cover expenses. Nor is there any provision in any contract or document related to the films for me or any member of my family to profit so much as a dime from the film projects.
Are you a donor to the Interpreter Foundation?
Yes. My wife and I donate every year to the Interpreter Foundation, and we’ve done so since its launch.
Do your donations exceed what you receive from the Interpreter Foundation?
Yes. Many times over. In fact, we rarely if ever receive any money from the Interpreter Foundation. We receive no compensation whatever for the untold hours of work that we do for the Foundation, nor do any members of Interpreter’s board receive any money for their service. Occasionally, the Foundation has reimbursed us when we’ve bought food for a multi-hour Interpreter board meeting or purchased paper supplies for our volunteer bookkeeper’s printer, or something of that sort.
Do you have an expense account from the Interpreter Foundation?
No. Nor does any other officer of the Foundation.
But aren’t your travel expenses (e.g., food and lodging and airfare) paid by the Interpreter Foundation?
My wife and I like to travel, and we do quite a bit of it. Some of it is to visit children and grandchildren (which, I think, even my critics may concede to be ethically permissible). Much of it, I admit, is for fun. When we planned out our retirement, we specifically allocated substantial resources for future travel. (We don’t own a cabin or a boat or renovate sports cars or collect vintage wines or belong to a country club.) The large majority of our travel is paid for entirely with our own money, from our own savings. (Again, I think this may still be permitted.)
I can’t think of a case where Interpreter has paid my travel expenses, and it has never paid for my wife’s. When I drive to present a fireside, I’m not even reimbursed for my gas.
If someone asks me to fly, say, to Chicago or Atlanta to speak to a group, I gently point out that Interpreter has no provision in its budget to pay for such things. In such cases, those inviting me will typically offer to cover my airfare and either to put me up in a hotel or in a Church member’s home. If I’m invited to do a fireside or a lecture in an area that we’ll already be visiting, I try to do it. And I do it at no charge, almost never expecting or receiving anything for my expenses from the sponsors.
It is, however, the case that, when we’ve gone out filming for the Becoming Brigham series in upstate New York, Illinois, Ohio, Iowa, and Nebraska, my travel expenses and those of the five others in the filmmaking team have been paid (e.g., airfare, shared auto rental, lodging, one daily common meal, and a small per diem for other incidental expenses. Again, I’m paid nothing beyond expenses.) This is done not by the Interpreter Foundation but by Redbrick Filmworks, the small movie-making company with whom we work, reflecting Redbrick’s standard practices during its film shoots.
With Redbrick, we’ve made Robert Cundick: A Sacred Service of Music [2017], Witnesses [2021], Undaunted: Witnesses of the Book of Mormon [2022], and Six Days in August [2024], and with them we’re now making Becoming Brigham. (For these efforts, see here, and here, and here.)
Only in the case of Becoming Brigham, however, have I been directly involved in the filming and, thus, only in the case of Becoming Brigham have my expenses occasionally been covered. But, even here, only for longer film trips (typically lasting from four to six days). While I’ve sometimes enjoyed a lunch with the others at Redbrick’s expense between interviews up in Salt Lake City (or elsewhere within driving distance), I’ve received no compensation for gas expended when traveling for these interviews nor any other payment for the work, which has often required most or all of a given day. Once or twice, my wife has come along. In those cases, she’s paid her own expenses.
My critics fault me for the sybaritic lifestyle that these film efforts have allegedly afforded me. And it’s true that I’ve been able to indulge my epicurean tastes in Nauvoo, Keokuk, and Fort Madison, luxuriating in several of the region’s finest diners and most lavish motels. You simply haven’t lived until you’ve savored a microwaved tater tot on Mulholland Street in Nauvoo, relished an exotic slice of takeout cheese-and-pepperoni pizza while sitting on a motel bed in southeastern Iowa, or enjoyed a local cheeseburger washed down by a cold Coke Zero.
But what about your international jaunts to such places as Australia, England, Turkey, Jordan, New Zealand, and Egypt?
I participated last year in a conference in Samarqand, Uzbekistan, to which I was invited by another foundation, not by Interpreter, and for which my travel expenses (food, lodging, and airfare) were covered by the inviting foundation. Beyond that, I received no payment. This is exactly the same way that Brigham Young University covered my expenses (and my colleagues’ expenses) at academic conferences during the time that I worked for BYU. So far as I know, it’s standard practice at other colleges and universities as well.
When I’ve accompanied tours—even those sponsored by the Interpreter Foundation—my food, lodging, and travel are covered by the travel company out of the money paid to that company by participants in the tour. Not by the Interpreter Foundation. I receive no money beyond food, lodging, and travel. (Many academics who accompany such tours receive compensation above expenses. Perhaps foolishly, I almost never have.) My wife and I aren’t independently wealthy, and these travel companies are for-profit businesses who apparently calculate (rightly or wrongly) that I add value to their offering. Perhaps, though, my critics’ thought is that I should donate my services to those companies and, so, dip into my life savings in order to widen their profit margins.
Do “lower-level Interpreter personnel” receive the same compensation as “Interpreter executives”?
Yes, they do. Precisely the same. Which is to say that they receive nothing at all. We have a few people who are paid for their services. I’m not among them. Nor is my wife. Nor is any officer of the Foundation.
Don’t donor funds pay for your annual Interpreter Foundation dinner?
To some extent, yes. It’s the only tangible reward that our volunteers—including the members of our board, who are all unpaid volunteers—ever receive from us. And, by the way, we invite many of our donors to the event, as well.
But we keep expenses for the dinner quite low. We don’t gather in a rented hall, for example, but on the basketball floor in a Latter-day Saint meetinghouse. And we’ve always done smoked meats as our main course. One of our regular volunteers happens to be an expert at smoking meats; he has commonly (and very generously) donated the meat and prepared it at no charge to Interpreter.
But aren’t you lying?
Of course I’m not lying. But those who accuse me of mercenary greed, flagrant dishonesty, and financial malfeasance, of being involved in the Interpreter Foundation solely or largely for the extensive travel and luxurious fine dining and substantial income that it supposedly provides me, will no doubt continue to insist that I’m attempting to deceive my readers and those who donate to the Foundation.
However, since such accusations have been publicly leveled many times over, I want the actual facts to be on the public record. Donors should know that their contributions aren’t lining my pockets.
Unfortunately, I have little hope — or, more accurately, no hope at all — for the chief fomenter of these accusations. For reasons that I genuinely cannot fathom, he’s profoundly malevolent toward me, and he’s quite cunning. As surely as the sun will rise tomorrow, he’ll find some loophole in what I’ve written here, or some way in which to misread what I’ve written, that will allow him to continue proclaiming me guilty of (among many, many other things) the unethical misappropriation of donated funds.
My hope, instead, is for reasonable, fair-minded people who might be looking on.
What next?
The same malignant individual has been anonymously and obsessively leveling online charges of financial deception and self-serving greed at me—and those are just two of his favorite themes—for well over two decades now. And he has a small chorus who follow his direction. It grew tiresome a very long time ago.
If my accuser is seriously interested in investigating my financial relationship with the Interpreter Foundation, he’s welcome to contact me. I will then try to set up a meeting for us with the people who manage my personal finances and the finances of the Interpreter Foundation, which are not commingled. Obviously, doing so will require him to surrender his anonymity and to scurry out from beneath the rock where he has been hiding for, by my calculation, approximately twenty-one or twenty-two years. If he isn’t actually interested in the facts of the matter—and, candidly, I don’t think that he really is or ever has been—his refusal of my offer will make that plain.
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