From 2018-2020, Brett Favre’s charitable foundation, Favre 4 Hope, which has a stated mission to support disadvantaged children and cancer patients, donated more than $130,000 to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation during the same years that Favre was working to finance a new volleyball center at the school.
Favre, a Southern Mississippi alumnus, is embroiled in a welfare scandal — extensively reported by nonprofit watchdog Mississippi Today — in which millions of dollars earmarked for people in need were misappropriated. Favre received $1.1 million for speeches he did not make, according to a state auditor report and court documents, and was instrumental in moving more than $5 million in welfare dollars toward the building of the volleyball facility while his daughter was a player on the USM volleyball team. He is among dozens of individuals and organizations being sued by the state. Favre paid back the $1.1 million, though the state says he still owes $228,000 in interest. He has not been charged with wrongdoing and posted on social media that he did not know where the funding for the volleyball facility came from.
In the same years Favre was soliciting money to build the volleyball facility, his charitable foundation, which received public donations, significantly increased its contributions to USM’s athletic fundraising arm. Tax records show that Favre 4 Hope gave the USM Athletic Foundation $60,000 in 2018, when no other charity received more than $10,000.