Scientology teases new fundraising strategy to speed up building projects

[Karen#1]

TONY ORTEGA
Excerpt:

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We want to thank the reader who passed along a new fundraising letter from Scientology. We’re always interested in church leader David Miscavige’s latest schemes and strategies for funding his various initiatives, and this one contained a surprise.

Beginning in 2003, Miscavige started a project to replace the standard “orgs” — short for organizations, Scientology’s word for churches — with gleaming larger facilities he called “Ideal Orgs.” Since then, he’s opened 69 of them, with 68 of them still in operation (the one in Moscow was shut down by the government there).

They each require huge investments — about $25 million each according to former church executive Paul Burkhart — and Miscavige leans heavily on the membership to cough up that money.

Some years, Miscavige has opened multiple Ideal Orgs (in 2024, he managed to open four, in Austin, Mexico City, Chicago, and Paris), and so far this year he’s opened one, in South Africa.

Some of the projects have been raising funds for a decade or more, with some of the planned locations in the US seeming to be hopelessly stalled (Albuquerque, Battle Creek, Hawaii, and Long Island to name a few).

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Scientology teases new fundraising strategy to speed up building projects

We want to thank the reader who passed along a new fundraising letter from Scientology.

tonyortega.substack.com

 

[I M Dex]

I wonder what goes through a Scientologist's mind when he's inundated with propaganda about how the stats are perpetually reaching new "highest evers" and when they're at their local "ideal org" there's about 9 visible staff and 5 or 6 public. Does he think all those "public flooding the orgs" run and hide when they see him or her coming? Maybe they've developed "Cognitive Dissonance TR's"?

 

[Enthetan]

I wonder what goes through a Scientologist's mind when he's inundated with propaganda about how the stats are perpetually reaching new "highest evers" and when they're at their local "ideal org" there's about 9 visible staff and 5 or 6 public. Does he think all those "public flooding the orgs" run and hide when they see him or her coming? Maybe they've developed "Cognitive Dissonance TR's"?

It’s worse for “old timers” who remember when they started over 40 years ago, having a Comm Course classroom with 20 people, and an HQS class of dozens. Who remember the size of the ASHO Briefing Course in the 80’s.

And then compare to now, and have to stifle screams of “Bullshit!”

 

[onceuponatime]

I wonder what goes through a Scientologist's mind when he's inundated with propaganda about how the stats are perpetually reaching new "highest evers" and when they're at their local "ideal org" there's about 9 visible staff and 5 or 6 public. Does he think all those "public flooding the orgs" run and hide when they see him or her coming? Maybe they've developed "Cognitive Dissonance TR's"?

It’s worse for “old timers” who remember when they started over 40 years ago, having a Comm Course classroom with 20 people, and an HQS class of dozens. Who remember the size of the ASHO Briefing Course in the 80’s.

And then compare to now, and have to stifle screams of “Bullshit!”

This is one of the main reasons they push so heavily to get the big donors moved to Flag, or to only do services at Flag/CC. If they never see the local org, or the local org is FSO, then there's no problem.

They've been pushing this line of out of town donors handing the remaining ideal orgs for awhile and I wouldn't be surprised if it's ramping up. The main problem they have these days with ideal org openings is staff, not finances. They can get big donors to bankroll an org. They can't get 100 or more people to sign up for staff and go to whatever random city. If they thought it was hard to get people to join Chicago and Austin wait till they are trying to get people to move to Albuquerque and Battle Creek. We're already seeing increased SO presence in Class V orgs and this trend will only continue, it's the only way they can get enough staff.