Taxpayer Philanthropy: Wealth building nonprofit is building founder's family wealth

In total, McGee and six of his relatives were paid about $950,000 in 2024, which accounted for more than a quarter of the nonprofit's spending. David McGee, executive director of Build Wealth MN, was paid more than $500,000 that year and his compensation tripled in recent years. Two of his sons, who were named to leadership posts shortly after they graduated from college with psychology degrees, receive about $113,000 apiece.

"That's not just a red flag — that's a parade of red flags," said Laurie Styron, executive director of CharityWatch, a prominent nonprofit watchdog. "When a charity's payroll starts looking like a family reunion, donors and taxpayers have every reason to ask if the charity's management and board members are making decisions that are in the charity's best interests."

In an interview with The Center Square, David McGee said his salary was inflated by what he described as deferred compensation leading into his retirement.

Specifically, he said he had not collected commissions "on a bunch of loans I was closing for years," and that he received an additional $200,000 annually in recent years because of it.

McGee declined to make any of the nonprofit's five unpaid directors available for an interview with The Center Square to verify the compensation arrangement. Deferred compensation is reportable to the Internal Revenue Service in the year it was deferred, but none of the nonprofit's previous tax filings noted it.

The tax returns that would list his salary information for 2025 and 2026 are not yet publicly available.

Decades of work

McGee and his immediate relatives' biographies on Build Wealth's website show some have been working there for a decade or more. But 2024 was the first year Build Wealth disclosed the salary payments to McGee's family members in tax filings despite federal requirements to report certain transactions involving relatives of nonprofit leaders, The Center Square's investigation found.

McGee said he doesn't know why the information was omitted in previous years by the financial firms the nonprofit paid to prepare the tax filings. Those records show that he signed them to signify he had reviewed them and that they were accurate.

Mistakes in tax filings can incur daily fines that have the potential to total tens of thousands of dollars.

McGee defended the salaries of his immediate family members, whom he described as multi-talented and chronically underpaid by his nonprofit. He said they could be earning more money by working elsewhere.

The significant payments to McGee's family coincide with a tremendous influx of state funding and donations to the nonprofit in recent years.

McGee concedes that major donors to the nonprofit have questioned his family's expansive role in the organization but that the donors have been satisfied by his explanations and continue to provide funding.

"If you really take the time to see what they're experience and education is with all of these family members, they're here for a reason, and they've been able to help our organization get to where it is today," McGee said.

A popular program with lawmakers

Minnesota state lawmakers have been giving Build Wealth $500,000 per year for about a decade to help fund its Family Stabilization Program.

The nonprofit offers financial classes and private coaching to help people increase their credit scores, avoid predatory loans with extraordinary interest rates and advocate for higher wages for themselves, McGee said in a video published online.

His primary focus has been to lift people out of generational poverty and into home ownership, he said. Thousands have sought help from Build Wealth, he told The Center Square.

The nonprofit's success "is evident in their ability to reach a high percentage of households of color and persons with low credit scores along with the significant benefits reported by participants from their involvement in the program," according to a recent annual report by the Minnesota Housing Finance Agency, the state department that oversees the annual disbursements to Build Wealth.

A spokeswoman for the agency, Jill Mazullo, did not respond to a request to comment for this article.

McGee said the nonprofit also acts as a bank to provide low-interest loans to local residents who might not be able to get them otherwise, to help them buy cars and houses and to rebuild their credit scores.

One of McGee's sons, Davar, received a $131,000 mortgage from the organization in 2014 and two car loans from the organization in 2016 and 2017 that totaled about $6,000, according to its reports to the Internal Revenue Service.

McGee said the son was required to go "through our program, which requires a really heavy-duty amount of two, sometimes three years' worth of education and coaching. You can't just get a loan without having that."

In 2023, state lawmakers earmarked $5 million for the nonprofit's 9000 Equities Fund, which has a goal of increasing Black homeownership in the Minneapolis metro area by 15% in a decade.

The nonprofit is also funded with private and business donations. The year before, the Bush Foundation in St. Paul committed nearly $6 million to the effort. JPMorgan Chase, one of the world's largest banks, gave $3 million in 2024.

About a decade ago the nonprofit had annual revenues of less than $500,000 per year. In the three recent years that McGee said he received the annual $200,000 deferred-compensation payouts, the nonprofit's annual revenues were about $8 million annually.

Styron, of CharityWatch, said it is "highly, highly unusual" for a nonprofit's executive compensation to be based on closing loans. Further, she said failing to disclose deferred compensation in the years it accrues "leaves the public at a disadvantage when judging whether or not executive compensation levels are appropriate in the context of the charity's overall financial situation."

A family legacy

McGee and his immediate family members occupy half of the staff leadership positions of Build Wealth.

Their jobs and compensations listed in the 2024 IRS filing include:

— David McGee, executive director: $503,715

— Regina McGee, his wife and program services director: $138,516

— DasJohn McGee, his son and strategic planning operation officer: $113,437

— Demitri McGee, his son and youth director: $112,610

Regina, DasJohn and Demitri McGee's salaries do not appear in previous years' tax filings because they were not earning the federally mandated reporting threshold of more than $100,000, David McGee said.

That indicates that Regina McGee received at least a 38% salary increase for 2024.

Three other relatives — Davar, TaLana and D'Anyka McGee — were paid a combined $85,953 for part-time marketing, bookkeeping and secretarial work. They are McGee's son, daughter and granddaughter, respectively.

"It's difficult to believe that, in a competitive labor market, five of the executive director's family members just happened to be the most qualified candidates for multiple separate positions," said Styron, of CharityWatch. "That's an extraordinary coincidence, and one that deserves far more explanation than simply asserting that these individuals perform legitimate work."

TaLana McGee has documented the nonprofit's financial transactions for nearly 20 years, David McGee said, and has a separate full-time job with a different employer.

Federal rules do not bar nonprofits from employing relatives of their top leaders, but their salaries must be reasonable and often approved by an independent board.

Build Wealth's 2024 tax filing says: "The compensation process is provided by the executive director, and the board of directors determines the compensation for the executive director and key employees."

David McGee told The Center Square that he works with the board to determine salaries for himself and his family but that the board ultimately decides them.

Competitive hiring process?

Online profiles and university records show that sons DasJohn and Demitri attained leadership positions at Build Wealth after they each earned bachelor's degrees in psychology. It's unclear whether they were promoted into those roles as part of a competitive hiring process because David McGee did not respond to a follow-up question from The Center Square after an interview.

DasJohn McGee was named executive administrator the month after he graduated in 2020 from Minnesota State University, Mankato. He was promoted to strategic planning operation officer in 2024 after earning a master's degree in industrial organization psychology from the University of Phoenix, an online university.

Demitri McGee was named youth director in 2018 while he pursued a master's degree at the University of Minnesota. He earned a bachelor's degree in 2016 from the university and a master's in 2019, in family social sciences.

"He probably could have went out and got $170,000 a year with his education and his experience, and I was able to steal him," David McGee said of Demitri, who is also a rapper who performs under the pseudonym M33CH.

Regina McGee is a certified mortgage underwriter, loan processor and loan originator, the nonprofit's website says. The family depended on her salary from full-time work outside of the nonprofit in its early days because David McGee said he initially received a minimal salary from the nonprofit.

IRS filings show his annual Build Wealth salary was less than $50,000 from 2009 to 2011. It increased to about $100,000 in 2012.

"I'm a pretty seasoned banker that can easily go out and make $500,000 to $600,000 a year," said David McGee, who began his career in 1982. "I decided to work in this nonprofit field helping people."