In the days after Alabama lawmakers enacted the nation’s most restrictive abortion ban donations began pouring into a little known state reproductive-rights group called the Yellowhammer Fund.

Musicians Maggie Rogers and Halsey raised $17,500 and $100,000 respectively through dedicated merchandise sales. Rihanna, Reese Witherspoon and Wilco each encouraged their fans to donate. Author Shea Serrano and his Twitter followers donated nearly $30,000. Pussy Riot announced a benefit concert for the fund will be held in Birmingham in July.

And just like that the Tuscaloosa-based Yellowhammer Fund had become an unofficial touchstone of resistance in the United States for those who wanted to do something concrete to protest Alabama’s abortion ban that was enacted in mid May.

The nonprofit, which started in 2017, provides funding for people seeking an abortion at any of Alabama’s three clinics and seeks “collaborations, advocacy, and programming that further the goals of reproductive justice, ” according to its mission statement.

But with such swift growth has come growing pains that have forced questions from within the organization and abortion community about spending and hiring. Experts say such questions come with the territory.

Yellowhammer suddenly grew from less than $5,000 in its bank account to having raised more than $2 million in the first two weeks following the abortion ban becoming law. The money raised would be enough to cover two-thirds of the average number of abortions in Alabama, which is about 6,000 in one year.

Yellowhammer Fund executive director, Amanda Reyes, said donations began to flood into PayPal within minutes of the law passing, in part because of national social media outrage.

“It’s absolutely astounding,” Reyes said. “It’s something that is completely unanticipated, but that we are extremely excited to be able to be in a position now that we can actually make a difference.”

Growing pains

Cash has continued to roll into the fund as national attention continues to be centered on womens’ issues in Alabama.

Another boost came this week when Marshae Jones was indicted by a grand jury for manslaughter after she was shot five times in the stomach and her baby died in utero. The shooter did not get indicted.

After news broke, Yellowhammer Fund set up a donation for Jones’ legal fees citing dedication to reproductive justice.

All that sudden attention and growth hasn’t come without pain for the relatively new group.

As the Fund works toward its future, it’s struggling to manage the unprecedented donations and expectations to ensure sustainable growth for the future.

The influx of cash to Yellowhammer has raised questions in the Alabama abortion community, including with a former fund board member, three abortion clinic directors and two fund volunteers who said the money is being spent on things other than paying for abortions.

Gloria Gray, the clinic director of West Alabama Women’s Center, said four patients have come in the last two weeks expecting to pay for their abortion procedures with pledges from the Yellowhammer Fund, but Gray had not received payment from the fund.

Gray said Reyes has not agreed to a meeting with Alabama’s three clinic directors to discuss the allocation of donations, and was concerned about the clinics’ relationship with Yellowhammer after reviewing PayPal spending for the month of May.

“We were afraid that anything we said would make the clinics look bad and try to make it look like we were being greedy and wanting the money,” Gray said. “That’s not the case. We just want the money to be spent for why it was given. That’s all we’re wanting. It doesn’t matter where the patient goes to get the abortion.”

What has some of the money been spent on so far?

AL.com reviewed the funds in the PayPal account history from May 1 to June 1. Among the expenditures have been a $10,000 payment to Apple, $6,000 to Druid City Pride, a non-profit that advocates for LGBTQ citizens in West Alabama, $1,500 to a doula service owned by a board member, $11,000 to a Mississippi abortion fund, and multiple payments to the three paid staff members of the fund in excess of $18,000.

But the group that appears to have benefited the most from the Yelllowhammer Fund during that period is Power House, which received a series of payments totaling about $100,000. Power House is a reproductive justice coalition in Montgomery, which is run by a Yellowhammer board member, Mia Raven.

Reyes, who is also the president of the fund’s advisory board, said the funds are being spent appropriately, but that they currently do not have the administrative staff to manage their growing budget.

Reyes said the Apple payment was to buy new computers for staff members and donations to other nonprofits are in line with their mission.

“We did not make a $100,000 payment to Power House (the Montgomery Area Reproductive Justice Coalition). Rather we have strategically deposited that sum with this partner organization in another bank account in order to have those funds available to us should they be necessary,” Reyes said in a statement to AL.com.

Questions about how money is being spent has caused some rifts within the Yellowhammer volunteer staff.

On June 1, Helmi Henkin resigned from her position as treasurer of the fund’s board after she said Reyes removed her access from the nonprofit’s bank account when Henkin began asking questions about donation spending.

“I went to meetings and interviews with Amanda where she brought up ways she had been spending donations we received that I did not know about previously,” Henkin told AL.com.

“Looking at the bank activity and PayPal activity, I noticed many expenditures in the two weeks following the ban, some much larger than others, that should have gotten board approval first according to our bylaws. Some expenditures created more confusion for me about where some of the money was going. Most of the transactions that worried me were using money straight from PayPal, and not going through the bank accounts at all,” Henkin said.

Despite spending concerns, Reyes said they have not hired a lawyer or financial adviser, but are actively working to find both.

“One of the things people also don’t know and are not familiar with is the fact that the people who are doing this work -- I was working on an eight-year-old Chromebook with no battery and my desktop computer is made up of scrap and I run on Windows 10,” Reyes said. “I have over $100,000 in student loan debt and I choose to work for free. I chose to found a fund that gave tens of thousands of dollars to clinics, to privately owned for-profit clinics for free at my own expense.”

In June, Reyes hired Candice Russell, a Texas-based reproductive-rights activist who previously served on the board of NARAL Pro-Choice Texas, as deputy director on contract. Earlier this year Russell wrote a post on Medium accusing Dr. Willie Parker, an Alabama doctor who performs abortions here, in Alabama, of sexual coercion -- accusations which he has denied.

Henkin said the board, which includes Candace O’Brien, Melodi Stone, Adrienne Wallace, Jilisa Milton, Mia Raven, Kari Crowe, Melissa Smith and Reyes, was not formally informed of the new hire until she saw Russell’s post on Facebook and brought it to the board’s attention.

Two board members confirmed that the new hires and spending were approved by the board.

Reyes said the board has approved a budget that includes a weekly pledge of $9,000 to fund abortions in Alabama through Aug. 31. She said the board has not brought up any issues with the way the donations have been spent.

According to meeting minutes from May 23, the board discussed potential salaries for three full time staff members, with $90,000 allocated to Reyes, $75,000 allocated to Russell, and $50,000 allocated to director of programs Candace O’Brien.

Reyes said they decided not to pay any staff members salaries, but contracted out the work for three months until an agreement is reached. According to Indeed, the average salary of an executive director for a non-profit in Alabama is $65,983.

Emrys Donaldson and Elizabeth Theriot, volunteer caseworkers for the fund who helped with patient intake, both said they grew concerned with the direction of the Yellowhammer Fund after discussion of new hires and the fund’s expansion into new areas of donation like breastfeeding and doula-care, a person who provides non-medical support before, during and after a birth, took precedence over expanding abortion care in Alabama. Theriot said she supported the new avenues for funding, but was worried about the lack of transparency in the organization’s financial priorities.

Donaldson said they and Theriot reached out to Reyes to be debriefed on the direction of the fund, but were called “abusive” for asking too many questions. Both Donaldson and Theriot were removed as volunteer caseworkers on June 19, after they requested meetings with the Yellowhammer Fund board of directors and asked what new directions the fund would be working toward.

“My main concern right now is our donors are being lied to about where their money is going and that the fund is using the abortion ban as a pretext to fund all these other things that are not abortion, which is not why I signed up,” Donaldson said. “I signed up because our clients are usually in really awful situations with pretty bad socioeconomic status. We signed up to help these people get the resources they need.”

AL.com reviewed messages between Reyes, Donaldson and Theriot and confirmed the situation described.

Yellowhammer Fund now has just one person doing patient intake.

Reyes said the Fund is working to partner with The University of Alabama School of Law and a financial advisor to ensure a sustainable plan for the future.

“I wish people would have more patience and more understanding of what the workload I was, and am, still experiencing,” Reyes said.

A few national nonprofit experts agreed.’

Yamani Hernandez, executive director of the National Network of Abortion Funds, said growing pains are understandable when there is a high influx of donations.

NNAF said it also raised more individual donations in the four days following Alabama’s ban than had the entire year. Hernandez said it is common for abortion funds to pay for things besides abortion procedures. and advocates for volunteer funds to shift to paid staff in order to increase attention and efficacy of operations.

She said it is unreasonable to expect a new abortion fund to have a comprehensive financial plan within a month of a tremendous donation increase and Yellowhammer deserves the time and autonomy to navigate through its transition.

Such troubles for a young nonprofit aren’t unusual, especially when substantial donations flow in surrounding a political issue, said Anna Massoglia, a researcher at the Center for Responsive Politics and Open Secrets.

“Nonprofit sizes, staffs, and budgets vary considerably,” Massoglia said. “As newer nonprofits grow, they may be subject to different disclosure requirements. However, even political nonprofits that have been around for years often fail to fill out forms completely or correctly, making it difficult to distinguish incompetence from deliberate deception in many cases.”

Donations continue to roll in, but so does November 15, the date Alabama’s abortion ban would go into effect if lawsuits from the ACLU of Alabama and Planned Parenthood are not successful.