After seeing their paid membership ranks increase 130 percent in six years, organizers of the Freedom From Religion Foundation (FFRF), a national group of atheists and agnostics based in Madison, Wis., said Monday that they are set to begin a large-scale expansion of their headquarters.
Annie Laurie Gaylor, co-president of the nearly 20,000-member group, told the Wisconsin State Journal that recent high-profile legal victories had increased the foundation's popularity and allowed them to consider an office addition that will quadruple its total square footage.
The construction project is slated to take a year, and the organization is hoping to raise $1.5 million to help fund it.
The FFRF is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) that has made a name for itself by taking a central role in a number of lawsuits concerning the separation of church and state. The group's legal endeavors have ranged from ambitious challenges of the placement of "In God We Trust" on U.S. currency to more individualized lawsuits against public schools for posting religious displays on their grounds.
Officials with the FFRF are currently pressing forward with a lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service, claiming that the agency has failed to enforce a federal restriction banning partisan politicking by tax-exempt religious groups.