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Updated to include newly elected School Board Chair Angie Gallo's donations.
Alicia Farrant, who lost her bid for Orange County school board chair in the Aug. 18 election, has donated her surplus campaign funds to the church she and her husband operate, campaign finance records show.
Florida election law gives candidates 90 days following a loss, withdrawal or finding themselves unopposed to dispose of excess campaign funds.
The District 3 Orange County school board member long associated with Moms for Liberty made the $19,215.25 donation to Impact Nations on Sept. 30, according to her itemized treasurer’s report, dated Aug. 18 to Nov. 16, 2026.
Impact Nations, founded in 2012, does missionary work in Guatemala and El Salvador. Farrant’s husband Jonathan is the church president; she serves as the vice president.
The church’s 990 tax form from 2024, the latest available on Propublica’s Nonprofit Explorer, indicates that in that year, it had revenues of $784,081 and assets of $1,221,103.
Prior years’ tax forms show that Jonathan Farrant periodically received a salary from the church: 2023, $42,000; 2018, $36,000; 2015, $3,000. But Alicia Farrant has not. That’s significant because Florida statute states that surplus campaign funds can only be donated to a nonprofit charity that does not employ the candidate.
The 2024 tax form indicates that as vice president Farrant worked 40 hours per week, making wigs for “children battling cancer in underprivileged countries,” for $0.
“Being an officer does not mean you’re an employee,” said attorney Cliff Shepard, founding partner of the Maitland law firm Shepard Smith Hand & Brackins.
According to her Form 6 financial disclosure from 2025, Farrant’s income comes from rental properties in Orlando, Antigua and Guatemala and a salary of $48,356 from Orange County Public Schools. Her net worth is $2,258,299.77.
“I think it is legal even if it maybe doesn’t look great,” Aubrey Jewett, political science professor at University of Central Florida told VoxPopuli, referring to the donation of campaign funds.
Jewett pointed to Florida Statute 106.141 directing the disposition of surplus campaign funds. Under the law, candidates have several options for disbursing unspent funds under $25,000:
When Randy Fust, Jr. withdrew from the Orange County mayor's race in June, he donated his unspent $1,943 in campaign funds to the Legal Aid Society, a nonprofit that provides referrals to civil and criminal attorneys who take pro bono cases for people who cannot afford legal services, according to his last campaign finance report.
Angie Gallo, newly elected Orange County school board chair, donated her surplus campaign funds to Orange County Public Schools ($500) and to Wright the Vision ($750), the nonprofit founded by Dr. LaVon Wright Bracy to assist underserved communities.
Dr. Michael Armbruster, the retired deputy superintendent for OCPS, briefly ran for school board chair, and when he withdrew from the race in May, he returned $13,855 of the $22,555 he raised to his donors, according to his campaign finance report.
“There is a sort of quasi-contractual relationship between a candidate and their donors,” Juan-Carlos Planas, founding partner of the Law Firm of Juan-Carlos Planas in Miami Dade, said in a phone interview. “Standard practice is to send a letter to every contributor asking, Would you like a pro rata refund or can I donate to a charity in your name?”
That’s what Planas, who was a Republican State Rep. from 2002 to 2010 and has since become a Democrat, said he did with contributions he received after he withdrew from a judicial race.
“When I got termed out of the state house, I was going to run for judge … and when I decided not to, I sent letters to everybody who had donated,” he said. “I think it’s unseemly to donate [surplus campaign funds] without offering contributors a pro rata refund,” he said.
But the St. Thomas University adjunct law professor added that as long as Farrant's donation was made to “a legitimate charity, on the election law side, there’s probably not a violation. Is there a betrayal of her donors if she didn’t send a letter? Yes.”
VoxPopuli emailed Farrant to ask if she’d contacted her donors, seeking their blessing to donate their contributions to her church. We did not receive a response.
