Last year, the National Rifle Association’s already plummeting revenues reached a new stunning low, according to an audit and tax filing obtained by CREW. The fall is driven in part by a steady, five-year decline in member dues which just hit historic lows. As CREW reported last year, the group’s income from members had already fallen in 2022 to depths not seen since at least the early 2000s, which is the furthest back we are able to track. 

Now, the group’s overall income—not just from members, but from all sources—is so low that it amounts to less than what it brought in just from members alone in four of the previous ten years. And there are signs in the documents suggesting that the problem is only getting worse in 2024.  

The new audit, completed in July 2024, shows the NRA’s total revenue from members in 2023 fell to $61.8 million, only a fraction of the nearly $223 million the group brought in from members a decade before in 2013 (all numbers are adjusted for inflation). Meanwhile, its overall revenue was down to just $178 million. To put that in perspective, the organization’s 2023 overall fundraising from all sources amounts to less than what the NRA raised just from its members alone in 2013, 2015, 2016, and 2018. All of this adds up to what has become an increasingly precipitous decline from the heights of the NRA’s record fundraising years in the mid-2010s, when the group was a fundraising behemoth that routinely boasted overall revenues over $400 million. 

Looking back to 2004, CREW could not find a single year when the NRA’s reported income from dues fell below $100 million, except for 2022 and, now, 2023. 

While data for 2024 is not yet available, a note in the audit hints at a burgeoning financial crisis at the organization this year. Under the heading of “Subsequent Events,” the audit says that in January and February of 2024, the NRA liquidated a total of $44.6 million from its investment portfolio to pay off a line of credit and supply funds for its operating account. 

The financial strains the NRA faces, however, are not just on the revenue side of the ledger. On the spending side, the organization is still bleeding money in legal fees. Of the more than $214 million the organization spent in 2023, fully $43.1 million—or more than 20 percent—was devoted to “legal, audit, and taxes.” This is comparable to the totals the group reported in 2021 and 2022, but still constitutes a roughly ten-fold increase over the legal outlays the group reported in 2017, for example, when it spent just $4.3 million.  

All told, the NRA lost $35 million in revenue last year, following a loss of nearly $34 million the year before. The massive drop in fundraising has caused the NRA to dip further and further into its reserve funds, with its net assets dropping nearly in half over the course of 2023, marking the second year in a row they had seen such a precipitous drop in revenues.

The new tax filing shows that, in 2023—his final year running the organization—the NRA’s Executive Vice President Wayne LaPierre pulled in a $1.2 million salary, consistent with recent years’ filings. This is despite the fact that LaPierre—long a lightning rod outside the organization—had become a polarizing figure within the organization too. A flood of revelations had shown at that point that LaPierre had lied about private yacht trips, used NRA funds for expensive private flights, and almost benefited from a $6.5 million purchase of a Texas mansion for him and his family that would have been paid for with NRA funds. 

LaPierre resigned from the NRA in January of 2024, ending his more than 30-year run as the organization’s leader. The following month, a jury in a New York civil trial ordered LaPierre to repay $4.3 million in misspent funds.

 

Photo of NRA HQ by Joe Loong under Creative Commons license

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