All of them, those in power, and those who want the power, would pamper us, if we agreed to overlook their crookedness by wilfully restricting our activities.
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Scientology's secular fronts are known to pay royalties (also referred as "trademark" or "license" fees) in order to use L. Ron Hubbard's "tech" in their activities. As an example, Narconon centers are contractually obligated to pay 10% of their revenue (donations included, and before program costs!) to Narconon International:
Narconon International ("Narconon") itself must pay trademark license fees to Association for Better Living and Education ("ABLE".)
Scientology's secular fronts are sources of fresh funds, by mean of royalties charged for these "secular" activities, aside being also conveniently used for recruiting purpose.
How much royalties are generated through the activities of Scientology's secular fronts? Although the 990 filings are available, the task of figuring how much royalties are generated is made more difficult by the fact that many Scientology fronts are just intermediates that collect royalties on one hand, and pay royalties with the other, without generating any in a significant manner.
But this is not an impossible task, and according to the 990 filings of Scientology's secular fronts that have been collected so far, here are some answers:
2007 (in progress) | 2006 (almost complete) | 2005 | 2004 | 2003 | 2002 | |
Royalties generated from known activities | 5,147,513 | 5,643,606 | 5,254,176 | 4,364,785 | 3,643,331 | 3,211,508 |
Royalties generated from unidentified activities | 4,877,465 | 3,180,112 | 2,745,386 | 736,553 | 810,845 | 499,996 |
Royalties generated overall | 10,024,978 | 8,823,718 | 7,999,562 | 5,101,338 | 4,454,176 | 3,711,504 |
Royalties generated overall - growth from previous year | 13.6% | 10.3% | 56.8% | 14.5% | 20.0% | |
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For each year for which we compiled data, there are always royalties for which the source can't be identified. Possible reasons for these unidentified sources of royalties:
Because of these reasons, it will hardly ever be possible to identify for sure all the sources of royalties. However, as can be seen, in 2005 there was a significant jump in royalties which source can't be identified — 36% of overall royalties — while the proportion of unidentified royalties in the previous years was fairly constant, at roughly under 20% of overall royalties.
What happened in 2005 to justify this sharp jump in unidentified royalties?
A first step is to figure under which Scientology umbrellas are these unidentified sources of royalties. To get there, we have to make a few reasonable assumptions:
Given these reasonable assumptions, here are estimates for 2005 (2004 figures included for comparison purpose):
Amounts from unidentified sources of royalties | 2005 | 2004 |
Narconon International | $1,863,249 | $352,066 |
Applied Scholastics International | $1,121,698 | $154,893 |
Although there are good hypotheses toward explaining why we can't identified all the sources of royalties, the sharp increase of these unidentified sources in 2005 is more difficult to explain. Further research is needed, but as of now, I am considering that some expenses on many Scientology entities were not reported as royalties, while the receiving entities reported these as royalties. More to come.
To calculate the overall royalties generated from known activities (the 990 filings we have collected so far), we have to consider only the Scientology fronts which end up effectively paying royalties, and ignore entirely the entities which collects more than they pay.
To calculate the royalties generated from unknown activities, we have to calculate the difference between the aggregate royalties collected and the aggregate royalties paid. The result should be zero if the sources of all the royalties were known and documented.
To calculate the overall royalties generated, it is simply a matter of adding the amounts of royalties from both known and unknown activities.
Collecting more financial data could allow to identify more activities where royalties are generated and thus reduce the "unknown activities" figure.
Since the most important fronts are included (ABLE, Applied Scholastics International, Narconon International, The Way To Happiness Foundation International), I think the figures we have for the "overall generated royalties" from the activities of the Scientology fronts worldwide should be close to reality.