by The Annual Compliance Report to Members was released and made available at the Meeting of Members on Saturday, April 18th. It covers activities from January 1 to December 31 of 2025. The report covering 2024 is available in the member’s only section on the NRA website. Just look under “Governance Information.” The 2025 report should be up there sooner than later.
I should add that if you have not registered for access to this, you should. I had one director complaining to me about not being able to print the Bylaws out from within BoardVantage which is the Board’s court-mandated secure portal. He wasn’t aware he could access this information and print the Bylaws from the Governance Information section. It looks like I need to do more to make members (and directors) aware of their ability to access this information which was posted as a result of my transparency resolution that passed at the 2025 Meeting of Members.
The compliance report covers five areas: travel and entertainment expenses; contract negotiations, exceptions, and subsequent payments; related party transactions; whistleblower reports; and independent audit. Rather than rehashing both the reports covering 2024 and 2025, I will just highlight some of the year over year changes.
Travel and entertainment expenses were down by $800,000 in 2025 from the previous year. Two major factors were the locations of the Fall and Winter board meetings and the reduction in number of days of each. The officers elected in 2025 made the decision that the Fall and Winter board meetings would be held in northern Virginia exclusively. This cut down on both lodging and travel expenses for staff. Additionally, starting with the Winter board meeting, the number of days for committee meeting were cut from three to two. Authorization for lodging only began with the day of your first committee meeting. For example, at our Winter meeting, I did not have a Thursday committee meeting but still arrived on Wednesday night as I wanted to attend the Legal Affairs Committee meeting on Thursday. As I’m not on Legal Affairs, I paid for that night’s lodging out of my own pocket.
I would like to point out that there were no charter flights in 2025, no first class flights, and only four pre-authorized exceptions to fly business class due to documented medical conditions.
Looking at vendor payments especially for legal expenses they were significantly lower in 2025 than in 2024. Of course, the New York trial had been finished. In 2024, Brewer, Attorneys and Counselors, was paid $32,273,602. In 2025, they were paid 6,885,582 for prior legal services and their engagement was ended. By contrast, the NRA’s other law firm, Baker Hostetler was paid zero in 2024 and $2,416,051 in 2025. They provide our board counsel and cover most of our outside, non-2A, litigation needs. The biggest vendor in 2024 was, of course, Brewer while the largest in 2025 was Fidelity Investments. The payments to Fidelity include both employee and employer contributions to the NRA’s 401(k) plan.
The total number of whistleblower reports were similar – 58 versus 57 – but varied distinctly. For 2025, while there were a total of 57 reports, only 48 actually related to the NRA. Of these, only 12% were substantiated as opposed to 52% from the previous year. Indeed, the great majority (63%) were unsubstantiated.
In addition to the reduction in travel costs, what makes me happiest is seeing that our auditors gave the NRA a clean audit for 2025. Aprio did special tests on 21 areas and found zero non-compliance. This contrasts with six instances of non-compliance in 2024. As our Chief Compliance Officer Matthew Boyden wrote about these results, “they reflect a culture of accountability that has taken root across the organization.” The NRA is digging ourselves out of the mess we put ourselves in but we are doing it the right way and without cutting corners.
The Annual Compliance report is embedded below.
“Travel and entertainment expenses were down by $800,000 in 2025 from the previous year. … I would like to point out that there were no charter flights in 2025, no first class flights, and only four pre-authorized exceptions to fly business class due to documented medical conditions.”
One way I know that the expenses were brought down is at least one Board member, when asked to represent at events that require flight, refuses by complaining about the price & says that it can’t be reasonable to pay what is needed for whatever trip in coach (to be bought closer to last minute due to the nature of the event planning). It’s zero surprise that the area of the community this director oversees is in pretty public and open revolt against continuing to work with NRA.
“As our Chief Compliance Officer Matthew Boyden wrote about these results, ‘they reflect a culture of accountability that has taken root across the organization.'”
Kinda, maybe? I mean, I know of cases that are reported because retaliation still happens. I know the problem is that if it’s not documented with the CCO, how can action be taken? But on the other hand, even reporting it to the CCO exposes victims & those people are not removed from a position to do harm. Plus, there’s a promise made for improving whistleblower reporting after an inappropriate near stalking situation publicly documented with a trainer & the victim did not have access to where to report it. So it went public. It was suggested how to fix this and we heard from lots of Board members that Matthew was 100% on it and it was going to happen that week… It’s probably been a month now and nothing has changed. Women subject to potentially dangerous and distressing situations with people operating under the NRA brand are still denied access to instructions on how to report it and have it addressed. The “rules” for reporting were made up by a non-lawyer who has let lines be crossed repeatedly because they don’t follow those made up reporting rules.
There’s still a lot for Matthew to clean up, and I sincerely hope he does and delivers results. It’s still needed.
“at least one Board member, when asked to represent at events that require flight, refuses by complaining about the price & says that it can’t be reasonable to pay what is needed for whatever trip in coach (to be bought closer to last minute due to the nature of the event planning). It’s zero surprise that the area of the community this director oversees is in pretty public and open revolt against continuing to work with NRA.”
This is a pretty vague statement. Is the NRA doing a good job or a bad job based on this claim? Has there been a new policy that individuals are having to pay for their own travel in order to represent the NRA? I think that if you are going to post up something like this it would be good if you could be more clear so that we can understand what exactly is allegedly happening.
On another note, John, I can’t find a place to view all that Governance stuff you are talking about. The only place I can find to log in to the NRA website is member services (and I can’t log in to that because my password manager has saved my email and the site insists that I use my member number (which I don’t know) but that’s another issue). That would only log me into nramemberservices.org, which I have never needed to access since I’m a life member. So can you clarify for us precisely where all this stuff is supposed to be?
Thanks.
The governance documents are on the NRA member services page.
So the money is saved because this board member uses the restrictions on travel expenses of trying to keep things reasonable for the cost of travel required (ex. if coach costs $900 in that market, it just does & there’s no objection to that spending for a necessary trip) as the excuse as not to travel at all. The cost cutting, even when it doesn’t apply beyond they can’t bill business or first class when coach tickets are available, is used as an excuse to not engage.
In this case, NRA has no issue with their policy, but this particular board member is using it as a weapon to stay away from the shooting community they don’t want to engage with despite the need to rebuild those relationships. So bad job by board member, no issue with NRA official policies.
Thanks for the clarification Bitter. That makes more sense.
Mostly good. I do have some concerns about board meetings at HQ. The board needs to get out of the Beltway where the members are. Sure, it is cheaper but there is another cost. Plus Virginia is now enemy territory, especially in the north part.
Kinda had to think about this for a bit because I do speak openly about NRA needing to get back out in the field. However, I’m curious what you envision for how this works and generates a good ROI for the added expenses of getting all of the staff who need to attend out there and losing 2 days of their work to travel.
Is the added time not working on members, services, and 2A stuff, plus the direct travel expenses of everyone going to result in something more meaningful in a hotel conference room in Helena, MT (just throwing out a city) vs. NoVA? Wouldn’t it be better for both the need to travel by both board & staff to focus on getting out to engage with events and activities with the gun community? That’s my instinct on the return and value of that time and travel. That’s not what the meetings are – the meetings are quite literally business meetings. They aren’t going to the range or playing around.
There are a handful of regularly occurring events that – mostly staff (but board support would be great, I’m sure!) – could be doing on the road. I have been advocating for this loudly in appropriate spaces. But I have to admit that the meetings, I just don’t see how the direct and opportunity costs generate a good return for the organization.
I have worked for boards that did it both ways. My experience is that being in the field works better to keep both board and staff connected to reality. (Especially when home base is the beltway.) It does take some effort to organize contacts with local supporters but the NRA ought to be up to it. Fly in, sit in a conference room and fly out won’t cut it. The meetings I imagine would be longer and thus more expensive but it would be worth it. After the scandals, the NRA needs to rebuild trust with the rank and file. The new board and changed procedures is a start but only a start.