No ‘Passion’ for Financial Transparency
Passion Conferences for young adults and associated entities don’t file Form 990s nor publicly post financials.
Since 1997, Passion Conferences have attracted young people between the ages of 18 and 25 to gather, listen to Christian teaching, and worship God along with well-known Christian music artists.
Louie Giglio speaking at 2025 Passion Conference
Nearly 60,000 young people attended this year’s gathering held at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, from January 1–3.
The conference charges attendees $189 each—with 60,000 in attendance, the Passion Conference for 2026 likely took in over $11 million in revenue for that event alone. But it is difficult to know how that money is used.
Passion doesn’t file a Form 990 informational return with the Internal Revenue Service nor does it post an audited financial statement on its website, so its total annual revenue, expenses, and assets are unknown.
Passion Conferences began under the leadership of Pastor Louie Giglio and Christian music artist Chris Tomlin under the name of Choice Ministries, a student ministry that Giglio started at Baylor University.
According to Giglio’s website, since its first conference, Passion has “gathered over one million collegiate-aged young people in events across the U.S. and around the world.”
The Passion Conferences attract well-known Christian speakers and musicians. This January, Sadie Robertson Huff, Christine Caine, and Jonathan Pokluda spoke to attendees while artists like Crowder, Kari Jobe, and Cody Carnes led the musical portion.
Giglio heads a whole network of entities related to the Passion Conferences, including Passion City Church in Atlanta, sixstepsrecords, Passion Publishing—which publishes books related to the Passion movement—and the Passion Institute, which partners with Dallas Theological Seminary to provide educational offerings. It also hosts other events, such as Passion Camp for teens. Finding public financial data for any of these entities is difficult (if not impossible).
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On its website, Passion Conferences says charitable donations can be sent to an address in Atlanta, and it cites a Tax Identification Number of 27-2355506. A search in the IRS nonprofit organizations database, Guidestar, and Charity Navigator doesn’t return results for any organization listed under that tax number.
Passion City Church has a tax number of 27-1721038 and does not file a Form 990 because of the church exemption.
Choice Ministries, the original ministry started by Giglio and also located in Atlanta, has a tax number of 74-2439414 and is a nonprofit organization. A Form 990 filed under Choice Ministries in 2012 showed revenue exceeding $18 million—$8.95 million of which came from Passion Conferences—and a fund balance of $7.7 million. Sixstepsrecords brought in revenue of $4.7 million.
Giglio was listed as the executive director of Choice Ministries with a salary at that time of $54,000. Giglio’s wife, Shelley, is listed as receiving a salary of $162,586.
On the 2016 Choice Ministries Form 990, Shelley Giglio’s salary was reported to be $261,683 — a $100,000 increase in just four years. The same year, Passion Conferences and sixstepsrecords brought in $8.6 million and $3.3 million respectively.
The revenue for Choice Ministries continued to be tens of millions of dollars until 2018.
The 2017 Form 990 that reports revenue from Passion Conferences showed about $5.8 million.
On the 2018 Form 990, Choice Ministries made a grant of over $855,000 to Passion, Inc. with the tax number of 47-4786195. Since 2021, Choice Ministries has filed a Form 990-N, a form available to organizations with annual revenue of less than $50,000.
Passion, Inc. was formed as a corporation in Georgia in 2015 under the name Passion Ministries International. It filed a name change to Passion, Inc. in 2016.
According to Guidestar, Passion, Inc. is not required to file a Form 990 because it is considered an association of churches.
Passion Conferences LLC is registered as a limited liability company with the Georgia Secretary of State Corporations Division. Originally Passion USA 2011, the group filed a name change to Passion Conferences LLC in 2017. Its corporate documents identify it as a nonprofit organization under the Internal Revenue Code §501(c)(3).
Nonprofit attorney David Bea told MinistryWatch that nonprofits are allowed to use the LLC organizational entity. An LLC is owned by an interest holder called a “member.” In this case, Passion, Inc. is the sole member of Passion Conferences LLC.
Even though Passion Conferences has its own tax number, because it is an LLC owned by Passion, Inc., its revenue and expenses would be included on the Form 990 of Passion, Inc. However, Passion, Inc. doesn’t file a Form 990 because it has been recognized as an association of churches by the IRS—so neither does Passion Conferences.
Passion Inc. nor Passion Conferences nor any of the associated entities could be located as members of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.
Some information about Passion, Inc. is included on the Passion City Church’s 2025 annual report, including that 33,976 young people attended Passion 2023, and $1.3 million was raised for scripture translation through IllumiNations. Passion City Church members gave over $7 million “above and beyond” regularly giving, according to the report.
MinistryWatch reached out to Passion Conferences, Passion City Church, and several associated entities along with the registered agent for Passion, Inc. to get more information about its tax status and financials, but the only response we received was from Passion City Church, which said the church would “not be participating in the update” to the Passion, Inc. Donor Confidence Score, which is 24 out of 100 in the MinistryWatch 1000 database—a “Withhold Giving” designation.
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