The man who wants to turn the former Green Mountain College campus into a Christian school called Z University arrived in Poultney last month to generate buzz and support for his plan. Tommie Zito, a flamboyant itinerant preacher from Florida who has made a career of visiting far-flung conservative Christian churches, led prayer meetings on the college grounds and live streamed himself to his social media followers, pitching the project as he seeks donations. Establishing a college is no small feat, particularly in an era when many schools are closing. Residents of Poultney are wondering: Can Zito actually pull this off? They asked themselves the same thing six years ago, when WhistlePig Whiskey founder Raj Bhakta bought the 115-acre campus at auction in 2020 for $4.5 million. Now, another charismatic leader may hold the keys to the prominent property — and the town’s future. There’s no record of Zito shepherding such an ambitious and costly project, though he did create a small Bible college in Florida more a decade ago that graduated a handful of students before he suspended operations sometime in 2017 or 2018. Much of Zito’s public effort involves traveling to churches to preach a message of personal salvation at revival meetings. Publicly, he claims to have “saved” more than 7.5 million people through his sermonizing. Seven Days wanted to ask Zito about the proposal, but he has declined to speak with the newspaper. Zito’s past operations have not been flush with cash, according to public records, and he has faced financial setbacks before. He formerly ran Tommie Zito Ministries out of leased space in Miami, Fla. California-based APH Corporation, the landlord, sued in December 2007, claiming it did not receive monthly rent of $12,000. In August 2009, APH won a $383,000 court judgment against the ministry to cover rent for the lease period of November 2007 through August 2010. Tommie Zito Ministries filed for federal bankruptcy protection in April 2010 and ceased operations. The ministry’s bankruptcy petition listed APH Corporation as its largest creditor. Tommie Zito Ministries filed for federal bankruptcy protection in April 2010 and ceased operations. APH ended up getting just $719 when a federal bankruptcy trustee distributed the meager assets of Zito’s ministry. Another creditor in the bankruptcy case, the Internal Revenue Service, claimed that Zito’s ministry owed more than $225,000 in back taxes for the previous five years. Evangel Cathedral in Maryland was also listed on the bankruptcy petition; it had made a $50,000 loan to Zito’s ministry that was not repaid. The same year that Tommie Zito Ministries filed for bankruptcy, Zito formed a nonprofit called American Awakening to continue his evangelical work. He has referenced American Awakening in his current fundraising efforts; it’s listed as one way to contribute to Z University on a website for the proposed school. Last Thursday, when Zito was on Facebook live streaming to supporters, Seven Days asked in the chat if donations to the project would be tax-deductible. Zito quickly replied “Yes.” However, the IRS says American Awakening lost its tax-exempt status in May 2025 and posted notice of the revocation on its public website in February 2026. The IRS revokes tax-exempt status automatically when an organization fails to file annual financial reports for three consecutive years. American Awakening’s last such form, known as a 990, was filed in 2021. That means any donations would not be tax-deductible. An IRS spokesperson said no further information about American Awakening’s status was publicly available. Zito did not respond to emailed questions about American Awakening’s tax-exempt status or the bankruptcy. Zito has publicly said he already has a $1 million anonymous donation in hand for his plan. Poultney will be the first of nine evangelical schools he intends to establish worldwide, he said, in Canada, Italy, Dubai, Poland, Sri Lanka, Japan, Ireland and the United Kingdom. Seven Days could not verify the $1 million donation, but that would be more money than Zito raised through American Awakening between 2016 and 2021, the last year that he filed a 990 form. The forms show that his organization collected a total of $924,103 during those six years. During that period, his organization spent $942,355. More than half of those expenses were for travel and meals related to Zito’s church revival trips. By comparison, Green Mountain College spent $27.4 million in 2018, according to 990 forms. Of that, $7.4 million was for wages for faculty and staff. Another $1.5 million was spent on food, and $1.5 million went to pay for legal, accounting and other services. Insurance alone cost $563,000 that year. Campus buildings of the former Green Mountain College Credit: File: Caleb Kenna Current campus owner Bhakta has said publicly that it will cost about $1.5 million a year just to deal with years of deferred maintenance. As Zito met last week with the faithful on the campus he hopes to own, some locals gathered at the Poultney Pub’s regular Tuesday night bluegrass jam. Danny Lang was among the crowd enjoying the food, drink and lively music. A 2016 graduate of Green Mountain College, he later bought the college’s woodworking and metal shop equipment from its Renewable Energy Ecological Design program to open a training center called Reclaimed. Residents such as Lang have already seen a grand plan for the campus wither and die. Bhakta never secured financing or permits to make it a world-class destination resort, and the campus has been largely unused. He also sued the town over its property tax assessment. Earlier this year, Bhakta announced that he planned to give the entire parcel to a religious organization and solicited proposals. No property transfer has been publicly recorded, and Bhakta said it will happen on October 1. Lang wondered aloud about how Bhakta chose Zito, as well as whether the newcomer has the ability pull off his vision. “Is this just Raj causing some mayhem for the town as revenge? Is this all just smoke?” Lang asked. “What about Zito and his donors? For the kind of money he would need, does he already have somebody in mind?” Lang said the best potential outcome would be hundreds of students and staffers returning to campus — along with the resulting economic benefits. The worst-case scenario, he figured, would be hordes of conservative Pentecostal students trying to “save” residents on the streets of Poultney. A young woman tending bar at the pub said many in town are concerned, while others are taking a wait-and-see approach. Zito, who frequently preaches about the perils of eternal damnation to hell, told his followers during a campus prayer meeting that he and they were part of a battle to reclaim American society. “We are going to flip Vermont,” he promised. Zito has thick-rimmed eyeglasses and wears his shirt collars turned up, even when he is sporting a necktie. Many of his past sermons are online, so his conservative credentials are well established. He is active on social media and frequently live streams himself on Facebook; he announced his Vermont plan on video from Walt Disney World in Florida. He has several Facebook pages; one has 11,000 followers. Two years ago, he was a guest on a webcast hosted by the Truth Liberty Coalition, a Colorado-based national organization of conservative religious and political leaders. They include Turning Point USA, founded by the late conservative activist and MAGA advocate Charlie Kirk; conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation; and Moms for Liberty, a MAGA-aligned group that advocates against school curricula that mention LGBTQ rights and fights to keep books it considers inappropriate out of schools. Some people are lashing out at me. We believe that we will win over a lot of people in the end.Tommie zito “The United States is burning,” Zito said on the podcast, with a graphic of the U.S. Capitol and American flags in the background. “Angels and demons are doing battle over America at a nuclear level.” He told political operative and antiabortion activist Janet Porter: “America is coming back. There is an army.” Zito also invoked the phrase “seven mountains,” an apparent allusion to the so-called Seven Mountains Mandate, a worldview that calls on evangelical Christians to gain influence, or “take dominion,” over seven key areas of culture: religion, family, education, government, media, business and the arts. To adherents, these societal pillars are battlegrounds. During a video tour of the Poultney campus that he posted to Facebook last month, Zito denied he was a Christian nationalist, although he acknowledged he might be a “bit more conservative” than the people of southwestern Vermont. He did not respond to emailed questions about his ties to the Truth Liberty Coalition. On social media last week, Zito warned his followers that “Some people are lashing out at me. We believe that we will win over a lot of people in the end.” He sounded optimistic, though, in many posts he made from Vermont. He shared multiple images of the faithful on the school’s campus. “Incredible Day on the Poultney River at the back of the University Campus,” he wrote in one post with photographs of people who had waded into the water. “The first of many water baptisms.” ➆ The original print version of this article was headlined “Can This Man ‘Save’ Poultney? | Tommie Zito wants to start a Christian university on the Green Mountain College campus. He’s had problems with money before.” The post An Evangelist Has a Plan in Poultney. Can He Pull It Off? appeared first on Seven Days. ...read more read less