The Doubt-Creation Business Built Around the CES Letter
The CES Letter is often presented as a personal document written during a faith crisis. Over time, it became something larger: a monetized project funded through donations, book sales, and related business entities. Much of the timeline and corporate record discussed below is summarized in Letter to My Wife’s research on the CES Letter Foundation, with additional notes and screenshots compiled by Answering LDS Critics.
How the CES Letter Started Making Money
According to this article, the CES Letter website was published in 2013, and by August 2013 the site was already being monetized through online “donations.” The same source also notes that a paperback version of the CES Letter began being sold as the project gained traction.
That matters because it marks a shift from “a letter” to an ongoing public project with an income stream. It also overlaps with the period when the CES Letter gained major visibility through online platforms and continued revisions. Once the “CES Letter Rebuttals” started coming in, Jeremy became overwhelmed with the time it would take to respond to them and so desired to make the CES Letter his full time business, and so plead with his supporters to support him and make this his full time livelihood.
He posted this on his website:
Because of new attacks against me and the CES Letter and I still had it in me to defend myself and the letter. However, after years fighting this battle on the midnight oil and weekends away from my family, I’ve now reached the end of my rope. I’m burned out.
The reality is that I just cannot continue to do both paths simultaneously as I have been doing the past few years. It’s just too difficult, time consuming and overwhelming. As much as I’d love to check off every item in the above To-Do list, bills still have to be paid and food has to be put on the table and taco money is not enough to make Path B possible. I’ve now come to a breaking point where I have to choose one path over the other.
How You Can Help
I need you to back me up here by helping me to hold the line in this very important fight. I need your understanding and support. If the CES Letter and all the work after it has brought value to your life and made it better, please pay it forward so that I can in turn continue to help the honest in heart seekers.
Vote with your donations. Be a Monthly Supporter today. If I receive enough monthly support, Path B will be possible and I will be able to take the CES Letter and its subsequent work to a whole new level. I will have the additional time, resources and breathing room to continue to make a difference.
This is not easy for me to ask this. I feel vulnerable doing this but unfortunately I’m at my wit’s end here with the status quo. It’s just too difficult and unsustainable for all of us.
I leave the future of the CES Letter project in your hands.
For those of you willing to pay it forward by helping those who follow you in the same journey of discovery and freedom, with all my heart, thank you.
-Jeremy
The CES Letter Foundation
The CES Letter Foundation is the nonprofit entity associated with the CES Letter project. On Jeremy Runnells’ own site, he states that the foundation was recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(3) on June 1, 2015 and that donations made on and after that date were tax deductible.
When It Was Formed, Where It Was Filed, and Why That State
The CES Letter Foundation was formed in Nevada on June 1, 2015. That same analysis argues Nevada is commonly chosen because it offers fewer public disclosure requirements for nonprofits and less public transparency around finances and reporting.
Public Filings, Compliance, and Loss of Status
A recurring concern raised by critics is the lack of ongoing public nonprofit filings. Letter to My Wife asserts the foundation’s only performed minimal filings, and that these filings stopped completely after 2019. Both the state of Nevada and the IRS eventually revoked the organization (Nevada for missing annual reports and the IRS for missing required filings).
Answering LDS Critics similarly states that the foundation’s nonprofit status appears to have been revoked and notes there has been no IRS 990 documentation provided since 2019, while also acknowledging reinstatement is possible.
Because nonprofit status and filing history are legal and administrative matters, the most responsible way to present this is to cite the public-research compilations above and link readers to the full documentation and screenshots they provide.
How the CES Letter Makes Money
Based on the sources above, the CES Letter’s revenue model is described as a mix of:
- Online donations (still promoted as a Non Profit Organization on CESLetter.org’s donation page)
- Paperback book sales
- Ongoing promotion and distribution that keeps traffic and donations flowing over time (discussed as part of the project’s structure by Answering LDS Critics)
The CES Letter Book Selling
Selling the CES Letter as a paperback book turns the document from a free online resource into a commercial product. Because they are selling them as a non profit, they claim these are “donations.” But to buy the book the donation charge is a minimum of $18.95.
Jeremy Runnells Other Doubt Creating Businesses
ManaFAQ, Inc.
Jeremy Runnells formed a for-profit entity called ManaFAQ, Inc. in February 2017 as a Delaware corporation and later registered it in Utah. The same source reports that Utah dissolved ManaFAQ in 2018 for failure to renew and that Delaware records later reflected loss of good standing due to registered-agent issues.
The Doubtsy Business
Jeremy Runnells also formed “Doubtsy” as a DBA connected to ManaFAQ, Inc., positioning it as a brand designed to help others publish, package, and monetize doubt-centered content. Rather than functioning as a one-off project, Doubtsy was presented as a platform and business concept aimed at scaling the same model used by the CES Letter.
According to publicly available business records, Doubtsy was registered in Utah as a “doing business as” entity and remained listed on the state registry until 2020, even though ManaFAQ, the parent company, had already been dissolved years earlier. This created a situation where the brand continued to exist on paper after the underlying corporate entity was no longer in good standing.
The purpose of Doubtsy, as described in its branding and messaging, was to help others turn their faith deconstruction stories into publishable and sellable products. This included guidance on writing, branding, distribution, and promotion, effectively treating doubt and loss of faith as marketable content. In this sense, Doubtsy was not simply an expression of personal belief, but an attempt to systematize and replicate the CES Letter model for others.
Viewed alongside donations, book sales, nonprofit structures, and affiliated entities, Doubtsy represents an expansion of the CES Letter from a single document into a broader business framework. It illustrates how doubt itself became the product, packaged and promoted through multiple channels, rather than remaining a private or purely personal experience.
Registered Trademark for the CES Letter “Brand”
Jeremy Runnells has also attempted to register the “CES Letter” as a federal trademark, signaling an effort to formalize it as an official brand rather than a personal document. Public records show that the trademark application has not been approved and has faced ongoing challenges in the review process. Likely reasons include the descriptive nature of the term, its widespread public use by others, and the difficulty of claiming exclusive rights to the title of a document that has circulated freely online for years. Trademarks are generally denied when a term is considered too generic, already commonly used, or when the applicant cannot demonstrate clear and exclusive commercial association, all of which appear to apply in this case.
Conclusion
If someone is asking whether the CES Letter functions like a business, the most direct answer is that the project has been tied to donations, sales, and corporate structures beyond a single personal document. The timeline and compliance questions are summarized in Letter to My Wife’s CES Letter Foundation report and reinforced by Answering LDS Critics’ overview, with additional context available from Jeremy Runnells’ own statement announcing the foundation’s 501(c)(3) recognition.