WASHINGTON – There is a good news story out of Minnesota amid the Wild West nature of national campaign finance: A Hugo father of three just formed a super PAC to fight dyslexia.
It's not a scam. In its federal paperwork, "I Am Dyslexia" purports to fund causes that help combat dyslexia and it is actually funding groups that are working for that cause.
Josh Berger is an entrepreneur who owns a Roseville company called Bright Hat, a software business that crunches data and analytics. Berger is also the dad of a little boy named Tryg, who was diagnosed with dyslexia when he was 5 years old.
Looking back, Berger said there were signs. Despite being a very social personality, he didn't speak much at school. His teachers noticed troubles with large and fine motor skills, and even after two years of preschool he could not write his four-letter name or hold a pencil correctly.
Berger's wife, Rachel, plunged into helping Tryg and researching options for support. She stumbled across a national group called "Decoding Dyslexia" and she founded a Minnesota chapter.
"I had been silently supporting my wife and what they were doing behind the scenes," Josh Berger said. "But it was hard … a lot of them weren't very organized. … Most of them didn't have bank accounts."
Berger started researching, too, and discovered that launching an independent expenditure group — in this case, a super PAC — freed the supporters from many of the federal rules saddling nonprofit organizations.
Super PACs can raise and spend as much money as they want. The cash can come from unions, individuals and private companies. Whoever is running the organization can use that money to say whatever they want about politicians, the political process or any proposed bill within the subject matter of the PAC itself.
The lobbying part was particularly important to the Bergers — something restricted if a group is registered as a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization.
"Technically, if you're doing lobbying, you can only do it in a very firewalled way and most of them just don't bother," Berger said.
A super PAC has a few downfalls — perhaps the most important is that contributions are not tax-deductible. But charities and advocacy organizations, including those promoting research in autism, are increasingly turning to the mechanism to be more free to do what they please.
Bright Hat's many tech employees have pitched in to help build their boss a decent website.
Though "I Am Dyslexia" is still brand-new, Berger already has helped Shannon Duncan, a Virginia mom of a dyslexic daughter, fund a 5K run recently. Berger's infrastructure and platform were simply a pass-through for Duncan so she could raise more than $7,000 from the run without drowning in paperwork.
"I don't think we could have had an event that large without the help," Duncan said, noting the technicalities of tax filing are not her strength. "It was really a wonderful option. We can now put our energy into spreading awareness."
