Membership is free and taken online, which is why the Temple's claim of more than 700,000 members should be read as a mailing list rather than a congregation count — the figure is the organisation's own and has never been independently audited. What is verifiable is the structure: chartered congregations across the United States, Canada, Australia and parts of Europe, ordained ministers who apply and are approved, a national council, and a headquarters in Salem, Massachusetts, opened in 2016 in a former funeral home. The Internal Revenue Service classified the Temple as a church or association of churches on 25 April 2019, a status the organisation had previously refused on the argument that religious tax exemption is itself an establishment problem. It changed position to secure standing in the equal-access cases it was already fighting.