What Trish Duggan is worth annually to Scientology leader David Miscavige

We’ve been meaning to check Trish Duggan’s financials for some time now, and when we saw that she was once again Scientology’s number one trophy winner at this year’s IAS gala, we figured it was the right time.

You probably know the backstory. Bob and Trish Duggan were longtime Scientologists from California’s Bay Area. Bob was an investor, and after their oldest son died of cancer, he focused his efforts to help fund research into things like robotics for surgery. He also invested in a small pharma startup, Pharmacyclics, that then hit a goldmine with a promising new cancer drug.

Bob and Trish became billionaires when pharma giant Abbvie swallowed up Pharmacyclics because of its success with the new drug.

Besides trying to boost cancer research after the death of their son, the Duggans also adopted a whole passel of new boys, and gave them all names that started with the letter D. And there was a really strange story about that which we covered way back in 2014.

It was around that time that Bob and Trish did something interesting with a portion of their riches from the Abbvie sale. We noticed that they had created the Bob & Trish Duggan Foundation, put about $59 million of Abbvie stock into it so that it would generate about $3 million a year in revenues, and in the paperwork of the foundation they made it explicit that they would only be giving grants from that money to the Church of Scientology or its subsidiaries.

It appeared to be a very clever scheme. No matter what else was going on with their personal fortunes, that chunk of Abbvie stock sitting in the foundation would generate at least a few million dollars for Scientology, year after year into perpetuity.

But then, a couple of years later, there was a snag. Bob and Trish ended their marriage (and it turned out that Bob had had another young son by a woman he had worked with at Pharmacyclics).

Around that same time, in 2016, Bob and Trish appeared to abandon the scheme they had set up at the foundation. They changed the name of it from the Bob & Trish Duggan Foundation to the Trish Joy Foundation, and rather than funnel interest money to the church, they just turned over that whole chunk of Abbvie stock, by then worth about $61 million, to Scientology.

We figured that David Miscavige must have been thrilled to get that lump sum, and he continued to feature Trish on stage at the Patrons Ball each year, giving her ever-bigger trophies for her donations to the International Association of Scientologists (IAS), Scientology’s membership organization and Dave’s litigation slush fund.

We wondered if Trish’s solo act on stage with Dave meant that Bob had moved away from Scientology when the marriage ended. But Bob later gave an interview to Tracey McManus at the Tampa Bay Times and assured her that he was still a member of the church.

In other interviews to the press, Bob had acknowledged that he and his wife had given something like $360 million to Scientology over their careers. But that was years ago. What we wanted to know was, how much is Trish giving Dave today so that she continues to get a new big trophy at the annual IAS gala?

It’s important to remember that when someone like Tom Cummins receives a trophy at the IAS Patrons Ball — this year for giving $55 million — that’s a cumulative total, and he might have given more like $2 million this year to reach that new status.

Trish is so far off the charts, though, it’s hard to know how much she forks over in a given year.

So once again, we took a look through the most recent filings of the Trish Joy Foundation and spotted some interesting things.

First, after that giant $61 million Abbvie stock dump that Bob and Trish forked over in 2016, the Trish Joy Foundation stopped giving big grants to Scientology.

In its paperwork, it still spells out that any grants it gives must go to Scientology or one of its subsidiaries, but in federal reports the foundation submitted between 2019 and 2022, we didn’t see any large grants at all.

Over those years, the Trish Joy Foundation was basically just sitting on $41 million, which Joy estimates is the value of her art collection. (Sure, Trish.)

However, records show that in 2020, Trish started up a new foundation with the rather unwieldy name of “Trish Joy Foundation for Humanitarian Activity.” We’ll call it TJFFHA for short.

That first year, all TJFFHA took in was $6,000, from Trish personally, in order to cover $6,000 in legal fees.

But then in 2021, TJFFHA really started to pick up speed. Infused with about $27 million in corporate stocks, the foundation that year made three grants, all to the IAS, and totaling $3,831,902.

A $3.8 million donation to the IAS is pretty good for a single year, but it’s not Trish Duggan good, you know what we mean?

TJFFHA, however, was apparently just getting up a head of steam.

In 2022, the latest year we have records, the foundation, again based on a valuation of $27 million in corporate stocks, made no less than ten separate grants to the IAS, totaling $18,557,237.

Now that is a lot of cheddar for a single Scientologist to give to the IAS in a single year. Only a very few Scientologists have ever given that much to the church in their entire careers, let alone in a single year.

It’s important to remember that someone like Trish Duggan will also be hit up for donations to Ideal Org projects, and things like the L. Ron Hubbard Hall construction, and other initiatives.

But it’s really interesting to get documentary proof that in 2022, Trish Duggan gave the IAS at least $18,557,237, and from her new foundation.

No wonder Dave gives her such big trophies.

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