A Carlsbad church has asked for the return of two $950 donations it made weeks ago to each of two school board candidates, despite federal rules that forbid tax-exempt organizations like churches from financially supporting or speaking in support of any candidates for public office.

The Mission Church Pastor David Menard had also urged his congregation during a sermon last month to donate to the two Carlsbad Unified candidates, Jen Belnap and Laura Siaosi.

When The San Diego Union-Tribune asked about the donations in light of the Internal Revenue Service’s tax-exempt rules, Menard said in an email Thursday that they had been made in error and that the church asked for their return.

“To support our community, we recently contributed to the campaigns of two Carlsbad school board candidates. Upon doing so we realized we had stepped out of the IRS guidelines for a 501(c)(3),” he said.

Belnap said in an email Friday that she learned Thursday that the church’s donation was illegal and that her treasurer then returned it. Siaosi said the church’s donation was “a nice gesture of support” but that she too returned it as soon as she learned it was improper.

The Mission Church, which is registered as a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt organization under the name Ezra Ministries, had given the $1,900 on Oct. 15, county campaign finance records show.

IRS rules say that tax-exempt organizations, including churches and religious nonprofits, are “absolutely prohibited” from donating to a political campaign or publicly voicing support for one.

The IRS adds that any financial contributions, as well as verbal or written public statements of position, for any candidate for public office “clearly violate the prohibition against political campaign activity.”

When asked why the church donated to Belnap and Siaosi, Menard wrote, “The Mission Church loves our city and our schools.”

Menard has previously explained his support for Belnap and Siaosi in greater depth.

In an Oct. 13 sermon, he laid out a plan for his church to take back the majority of the five-member school board from candidates backed by the teachers union. The new board will soon have to hire a new superintendent to succeed Benjamin Churchill, who is leaving this December for Poway Unified.

The church already has the support of one sitting board member, Gretchen Vurbeff, Menard said, so adding two more would establish a majority that the church supports.

He called the LGBTQ community “the opposition” and suggested it is responsible for putting the current union-backed majority on the board.

“The opposition, the LGBTQ community, has discovered the importance, long before we did, of having the right people on the school board,” Menard said.

He told his congregation it was important to bring back the “right values” to schools.

“We need to focus on truth, and we need to focus on bringing our kids back to science and math and the main core subjects, and not bombarding them with ideologies that destroy lives,” Menard said.

Menard also urged his congregation to donate to Belnap and Siaosi’s campaigns and vote for them.

“I would like to ask you to support them, both with your votes and financially,” he said. He added that the Mission Church was financially supporting Belnap and Siaosi “peripherally.”

Belnap and Siaosi also spoke during the sermon. Belnap, who is a Carlsbad High School parent, said she was running to prevent the board from having four or five trustees endorsed by the teachers union.

“I’m running to ensure a diverse viewpoint on that board,” she said. “I’m also running to ensure that we honor and respect the sacred role of family and the family unit in our community.”

Siaosi, who is also a Carlsbad High parent and whose husband is a volunteer coach, compared her school board race to a battle of good and evil.

“I never really thought of myself being active politically, but we are coming to times where all it’s taking for evil to prevail is for good men and women to stand by and do nothing, and I cannot do nothing,” she said.

The Mission Church, which Menard established in 2011, made headlines last year when it mobilized opposition to a school district diversity, equity and inclusion plan that had been drafted under Churchill’s direction. The board ended up approving the plan.

Belnap’s and Siaosi’s opponents, Ejehan Turker and Alison Emery, said they were taken aback when they learned that the two had received donations from the church.

Turker, a parent who is running against Siaosi, said she thinks the fact that Siaosi and Belnap chose to accept the donations is unethical and indicative of how they would serve on the school board.

“How far will they push the line as well, if elected to office, to advance their own political agendas?” Turker said.

Siaosi said her critics have used the church donation “to continue their relentless attack on my character.”

“I do find it disturbing that the very people purportedly fighting for diversity, equity and inclusion here in Carlsbad see no hypocrisy in their assaults upon people of faith,” she said.

Turker and Emery both said that if elected, they intend to be a “stabilizing presence” on the board to prevent groups from creating “chaos” at school board meetings to advance their own political “ideologies.”

They said they are concerned about the Mission Church’s involvement in their opponents’ campaigns because they see the church trying to advance a religious agenda in public schools and “sow division” in the district. They said schools need to make all students feel safe, supported and included and think the church’s goals run counter to that.

“I just want to bring calm to the chaos, bring down the tone and the rhetoric, bring it back to those educational philosophies and best teaching practices,” said Emery, a Carlsbad parent and Solana Beach teacher who’s also on the Solana Beach teachers union bargaining team.

Both Turker and Emery are endorsed by the Carlsbad teachers union.