LifeWise Academy experiences great growth amid criticism
COLUMBUS, Ohio (WCMH) - LifeWise Academy started in just a handful of schools about seven years ago; this year, it will be in more than 1,000 schools in 34 states. That growth hasn’t come without controversy.
"We welcome the scrutiny,” LifeWise Founder and CEO Joe Penton said. “We welcome the microscope, the spotlight. We are, we want to maintain the highest standards of excellence.”
LifeWise Academy is largely funded through millions of dollars in donations. It uses a “release time religious instruction” Supreme Court ruling to avoid infringement on the separation of church and state.
"’Congress shall make no law establishing religion,’” Capital Law professor Dan Kobil said. “That was interpreted by the US Supreme Court about 80 years ago as meaning that not just Congress, but also states could not establish religion.”
Kobil explained that a public school teaching the Bible would be considered “establishing religion.” Penton saw an opportunity to teach the Bible to public school students, during the school day, but off school grounds.
IRS filings show the rapid growth of LifeWise. In 2019, it claimed just more than $1.6 million in revenue. That number ballooned to more than $35 million in 2024.
"We do not invest a lot into marketing,” Penton said. “I mean, we have some marketing, but more often than not, people hear about it. They hear about it because the neighboring school district has a LifeWise, or because their relative has a LifeWise, or they see it, someone posting about it on Facebook.”
That money comes mostly from donations, program fees, and grants, although LifeWise did claim almost $900,000 in investment income in 2024. Many contributions are made through foundations categorized as Donor Advised Funds, or DAFs. These types of foundations allow donors to anonymously contribute money to the fund and direct it to an organization of their choosing.
Penton responded to a question about donations by saying, "We try to honor the privacy of our donors. I mean, we are like any nonprofit. We report out what we are required to report out, and many donors give through donor-advised funds. So you'll see that we received donations through the National Christian Foundation, through the American Endowment Foundation, and through other entities like that, and that's one of the decisions donors make sometimes, is to have these donor-advised funds with these larger foundations."
Penton said each program needs between $30,000-$40,000 a year to operate.
"Our programs typically pay about 9% in administrative fees,” he said. “As of right now, that does not even come close to covering what it costs the central what we call our support center, to serve our communities. We do a lot of central fundraising to make up the difference. But we're on a plan that at scale, it will be sustainable.”
The LifeWise Handbook clearly states it is not a political organization, but its “worldview statement” is clear on the issues of “sexuality & gender” and abortion, both polarizing political issues. Penton also appeared on a podcast with the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think-tank behind Project 2025, its plan for government overhaul.
"I've been interviewed by the Heritage Foundation,” Penton said. “I've been interviewed by a variety of podcasts. So I'm going pretty much any podcast that wants to give a platform to tell their audience about LifeWise Academy.”
NBC4's Kyle Beachy sat down with Penton for a lengthy interview. Some of that interview can be found here, but the rest is transcribed in the following:
Beachy: "How much money does it take to kickstart a program in a community?"
Penton: "Well, we invest quite a bit of manpower and that's paid staff to help communities and give them the tools and walk them through it. But for a local community, they just raise whatever they're going to spend in their local community. So they likely hire a part time director. Once they get started, they hire part time teachers. They, they might have a bus, on average, $30,000 to $40,000 per school building to service school for a full year."
Beachy: "Are you, are you lobbying senators, state senators and state representatives?"
Penton: "We spend a certain amount of funds on lobbyists, whether that's at the federal level or a few different states. It's important to us to advocate for policies that make release time available to as many families as possible. It's, you know, life wise, is really started to remove barriers.
"Often times one of the biggest barriers is state legislation. And so we take the responsibility to advocate for policies that open up the practice."
Beachy: "Do you see involvement in politics more in the future of likewise?"
Penton: "I think only as far as advocating for policies that make release time accessible to all families. We are not a political organization. We don't endorse political candidates or political parties, but we do advocate for policies. And we will, I imagine that will always be a small part of what we do. And it's currently a very small part, but an important part."