The federal voucher program birthed by the Big Beautiful Boondoggle Bill aims to spread a lot of money around, and folks are already getting ready to hoover up a share of the taxpayer-funded largesse. The tricks is to set up a Scholarship Granting Organization.What's an SGO again?Tax Credit Scholarships are a way to launder taxpayer dollars before funneling them to private, often religious, schools. To hand the money taxpayer to government to private school would be illegal, so instead, the money goes from taxpayer to SGO (instead of the government) to private school. That shifting of the taxpayer's liability from government to private school is totes legal (except in Kentucky, where the courts are smarter than that). So the SGO collects the money and hands out the vouchers, and in between, it collects a handling fee, typically between 5% and 10%. SGOs can make some money on the state level, though in many cases they exist just to funnel taxpayer dollars to a particular private school. But the idea of a federal voucher system creates some big possibilities.There's a wild range of estimates for how much money will be involved in federal vouchers, from $51 billion down to $3 billion. But no matter who turns out to be correct, a 10% will be mean there's a hefty stack of money in play for SGOs on the national level. All the more motivation for voucherphiles to get in on the financial harvest.American Federation for Children As we have noted before, the DeVosian national-level privatization advocacy group is already setting up their own national SGO and teaming up with Odyssey, an outfit that promises "an automated, end-to-end school choice platform. AFC's announced plans that involve serving as an SGO for SGOs-- a national feedline for ambitious state-level SGOs. And look-- nobody yet knows what the actual rules and regulations are going to look like. Will this kind of SGO-to-SGO pipeline be legal? Better question-- will SGOs get to skim off a fee at every level, so that the piece of pie is whittled away as it moves down through the privatization funnel?But AFC plans give you an idea of how much money is in play-- they are spending $10 million just to publicize and prepare the ground for the launch of federal vouchers. When you can spare a cool ten mill just to launch your new program, you know you're expecting some hefty ROI.Center for Christian VirtueState players are also planning to upsize. The Center for Christian Virtue has been active in Ohio since the days of 1983 when it was the more for Citizens for Community Values. Back in 2024 they won an award from the Heritage Foundation that they planned to use "to support its Education Restoration Initiative, addressing Ohio's academically broken and morally corrupt government-run education system."They've been quite plain about being on a mission to replace public schools with private Christian schools, including helping churches set up such schools. But with the federal voucher program, they have announced their intent to go national by taking its state-level SGO, the Christian Education Network, and sending it out into other states. “Families are searching for both excellence and biblical values in education, so this program creates a critical pathway forward,” said Troy McIntosh, Executive Director of CEN. “It gives parents and grandparents a choice they may not have thought possible, and provides Christ-centered schools with new financial resources."And for just 10% of the take, they will provide that.MyChurchSGOEven if you aren't a state or national player, you can still play along! Meet Richard Poljan and MyChurchSGO. In fact, I'll let him introduce himself, because otherwise you might think this is a parody video. Yup. God's new gold mine.Poljan has put up several of these videos, and they aren't exactly pulling in the big views. He's a hard man to track down, but he appears to be working in Fowler, Michigan, a small town NW of Lansing (be sure to visit Chester's Chicken while you're there). Richard "Buddy" Poljan appears to have no actual education background; his LinkedIn says he put in a couple of years at Hillsdale, then got a degree at Michigan Technological University before embarking on a career as an industrial engineer, currently with EFI Global, the "fire, environmental, and engineering experts." Looks like he played some college football. And he's served on some GOP local leadership groups.MyChurchSGO has a website up, though it doesn't seem to be quite finished. Poljan does get the basic pitch here-- you can give $1,700 to the government or to your favorite church school. Also, don't have too many rules or parents will go to some other SGO. Also, to churches he says, "Get free money from the Government and bring in lots more revenue for your Church." Finally, "Get your SGO up and running," Poljan urges, "so that you can help kids make it to heaven."But it's been six months, and Poljan's operation doesn't seem to be exactly taking off, and it does seem that bush-league start-ups like his will mostly get swamped by the big state and national SGO operations. Still, expect plenty of similar small time pop-ups to try to get a piece of that God's big new gold mine.
