Taxpayer Philanthropy: Detroit pastor paid $540K for part-time work

(The Center Square) — A Detroit pastor who last year admonished a parishioner for her inadequate church donation of $1,235 was paid a salary of $538,955 that year by a taxpayer-funded nonprofit he leads that is separate from the church, according to federal records.

That salary for Marvin Winans Sr. — the pastor of Perfecting Church and a Grammy-winning gospel singer — accounted for about 61% of what the nonprofit spent toward its stated mission of "community development," its recent report to the Internal Revenue Service shows.

His role as president for the nonprofit — Perfecting Community Development Corporation — is a half-time job, the report says, which means he was paid about $518 per hour.

Winans' salary has increased substantially in recent years and coincided with a $500,000 government grant the state awarded the nonprofit. Grant application guidance indicates the award was funded with federal pandemic relief money.

"I don’t know whether there were better recipients for this cash, but it doesn’t look like it was supposed to go to pay for the salaries of an organization’s director," said James Hohman, director of fiscal policy for the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a prominent conservative think tank in Michigan.

Winans did not respond to repeated requests from The Center Square, including a visit to his church, to comment for this article. The Center Square also sent him an email that summarized the article's findings.

The salary Winans receives from the church itself, separate from the nonprofit, is not publicly disclosed because churches are generally not required to report their spending to the federal government.

His salary increases also come amid his vigorous fundraising campaign to finish work on an enormous church that has been under construction for more than 20 years.

'That ain't what I asked you to do'

Perfecting Church operates in a large building on the east side of Detroit that was a former charter school, according to real estate listings. It has three stories and about 60,000 square feet of operating space.

The church hosts worship services, morning prayers and Bible studies on Sundays and Tuesdays.

The building, on Detroit's east side, is nestled among residential areas dense with small houses with typical values of less than $70,000. Many unoccupied and blighted houses nearby — the result of Detroit's immense population collapse over decades — have been dozed.

Yet in the early 2000s, Winans proposed a brand new church complex for his congregation about 5 miles away that he estimated might cost about $60 million. Work began in 2004 but stalled during 2008 financial crisis.

It had stood unfinished for years with chain link fence surrounding it.

In 2023 the city of Detroit sued Perfecting Church for not finishing the project. The suit — part of the city's efforts to rejuvenate blighted properties — sought to force the church to finish the project or to relinquish the property.

To settle the lawsuit, Perfecting Church agreed to finish the project and has said it might be done by year's end. It has been aggressively fundraising.

That included a "Day of Giving" in October 2025, in which Winans tasked his congregants to donate $1,000 of their own money and an additional $1,000 that they gathered from others.

During a church service he asked those congregants to individually approach the front of the sanctuary and present their donations.

When one woman, accompanied by a child, presented her $1,000 plus $235 she had obtained elsewhere, Winans responded: "Now that's only $1,200. ... Y'all not listening to what I'm saying," according to video the church had published of the service.

After the incident spurred public outcry, Winans explained to local news reporters that the woman had come forward during the service at the wrong time. Those with the full $2,000 were supposed to present first as he publicly accepted the donations in order from largest to smallest.

In the video, when the woman said she would "work on the other $800," Winans replied: "Well, that ain't what I asked you to do."

It's unclear how much money Winans has himself contributed to the project. He achieved fame in the 1980s with his gospel quartet The Winans, which included his three brothers.

Winans also had a recurring television role in Tyler Perry's House of Payne. (Perry gave $100,000 to the church shortly after the donation controversy in what Winans described as: "What the devil meant for evil, God turned it around.")

And last year Winans was featured on pop star Justin Bieber's album "Swag."

Salary increases with taxpayer support

The nonprofit Perfecting Community Development Corporation gained tax-exempt status in 1997.

When Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced $64 million of Community Center Grants in 2024 — including $500,000 for the nonprofit — the state's website lauded the nonprofit's care center for being "a beacon of hope and support in the heart of Detroit."

"The center offers a wide range of services, including food distribution, educational workshops, and emergency support, all designed to meet the diverse needs of the community," the website says.

In past years, the nonprofit had 11 paid employees. But starting in 2020, it began paying Winans a salary and had no other paid employees, according to its reports to the IRS. Instead it has 15 volunteers.

Winans' salary ballooned from about $205,000 in 2020 to nearly $540,000 last year, nonprofit tax returns show. It's unclear whether the salary increased again this year because those reports are not yet available.

In each of those years, Winans' salary was the single-largest expense cited for its program services, which is what the nonprofit spends toward its mission. The salaries have accounted for between 39% and 65% of that spending.

His salary is set by a four-person oversight board that includes Winans.

"The salaries for all current employees was based on the local (market) rates and the ability of the organization to pay salaries," the nonprofit reported to the IRS.

The board members could not be reached to comment, and Winans' secretary, when contacted by phone, declined to say whether they are affiliated with his church.

His salary and its subsequent increases coincided with an influx of government grant money, the federal reports show. In 2020 when Winans first took a salary from the nonprofit, government contributions more than doubled to about $180,000.

In the past two years, government grants to the nonprofit totaled about $867,000, and Winans' total compensation for those two years was just shy of $1 million.

Erica Quealy, a spokesperson for the state Department of Labor and Economic Opportunity that issued the $500,000 grant to the nonprofit in 2024, said the department has no evidence Winans has misused the money.

"Our reporting records show that the organization is spending the grant money appropriately," she said.

Quealy did not respond to a question about whether Winans' salary is appropriate. Whitmer's office did not respond to requests to comment for this article.

The nonprofit's reports to the IRS also indicate it has received grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, the federal Emergency Food and Shelter Program, the state Out-of-School Time Grant Program and several private entities, including Salvation Army and United Way.