Filings Show Massive Dark Money Influx For Major “Progressive" Non-Profit
By: Robbie Jaeger
Tags: Campaign Finance, Democrats, Elections, Nonprofit, Politics

According to tax documents obtained by MCSC Network, America Votes — a leading Democratic political nonprofit — reported $63,715,942 in contributions during their 2019 fiscal year, which ran from 07/01/2018 to 06/30/2019. The total dwarfed their previous year’s income of $12,659,327 — marking an astronomical increase of 500% year over year.

The organization disbursed $43,496,984 to roughly 110 political groups and SuperPACs, and paid $5,112,605 in salaries. They ended their 2019 fiscal year with $8,102,270 in the bank.

America Votes is classified as a 501(c)(4) “dark money" tax exempt organization, meaning they are not obligated by law to publicly disclose their donors, but that doesn’t mean it is impossible to partially track the money trail. According to the documents, America Votes had two major donors which accounted for roughly two-thirds of their income for the year: one donation of $31,200,000 and another of $14,846,000. Five additional donors also gave amounts greater than $1,000,000 — meaning that seven donors made up nearly 85% of the groups funding overall.

Further research, however, may shed additional light on where some of the money came from. Tax records show that one of the most prominent dark money organizations in the country, Sixteen Thirty Fund, donated $27,000,000 to America Votes in 2018, with another donation upwards of $7,000,000 coming the following year. It should be noted that Sixteen Thirty and America Votes do not share a fiscal year, and the reported totals are likely in aggregate — so a portion of those donations may have occured after the reporting deadline. Given those facts, and that no other donations to America Votes during that period come anywhere close to matching the $31,200,000 disclosed, it is probable that is where the massive donation came from.

As mentioned, The Sixteen Thirty Fund — operated by former Clinton operative Eric Kessler’s nonprofit consultancy firm, Arabella Advisors — is one of the most prominent political dark money groups in existence, pulling in roughly $280,000,000 since 2018 from largely unknown sources. Analysis of their 2018 tax returns show Sixteen Thirty Fund raised $143 Million that year. When it comes to their individual donors, one anonymous contributor gave north of $50 Million (per Politico), and another $26 Million came from the New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty’s sister nonprofit. New Venture Fund themselves reported $405 Million in donations in 2018, with 78% coming from foundations — and 25% of that ($81 Million) came from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, likely making them NVF’s largest donor that year (that we know of).

That anonymous $51 Million and the $26 Million from New Venture Fund accounted for roughly 50% of Sixteen Thirty’s donations for 2018. The group received other foundational support from Tides Center, Democracy Alliance’s State Engagement Fund, billionaire and The Intercept backer Pierre Omidyar’s Democracy Fund, as well as several other prominent nonprofits.

On the spending front Sixteen Thirty spent over $4,000,000 on political activities during the 2018 election cycle, before exploding into the top five of funders for outside spending group in 2020, spending north of $120,000,000 on donations to numerous pro-Biden Super PACs such as Priorities USA, Unite The Country, and American Bridge.

Another major dark money powerhouse wound up as America Votes' second largest contributor — Majority Forward — whose 2018 tax filings confirm the aforementioned $14,864,000 donation. Majority Forward has become a major political player in recent years, notably as a parent organization to SMP, the largest pro-Democratic Senate-focused Super PAC — with whom Majority Forward shares a executive, J.B. Poersch. SMP has raised over $500,000,000 over the last two election cycles behind massive donations from billionaires such as Michael Bloomberg ($20,000,000), George Soros' Democracy PAC ($8,500,000), Donald Sussman, and James Simons. SMP spent $111,587,750 on the 2018 midterms (upping that number to $228,985,172 in 2020), with Majority Forward spending another $40,000,000 plus. A 2019 study by Issue One found that $1 of every $3 of dark money spent during the 2018 cycle came from the Majority Forward.

In the election spending arena, America Votes reported spending $17,262,585 — nearly 40% of their payouts for the year — funding Super PACs during the relevant time frame — with the top recipients being the League of Conservation Voters Victory Fund ($2,500,000), Black PAC ($1,700,000), For Our Future ($2,300,000) and Win Justice ($1,800,000). Other significant donations from America Votes to nonprofits include $4,580,000 to Black Progressive Action Coalition and $4,400,000 to For Our Future Action Fund.

Founded in 2003, America Votes describes themselves a the “Coordination Hub of the Progressive Community", with their website saying they are the “common link between many of the largest and most influential issue and membership organizations in the country”. A longtime, and current, member of anonymous billionaire donor group Democracy Alliance’s portfolio, and their coziness to numerous Democratic Party linked organizations, not much is really known about America Votes’ individual donors — given their status as a 501(c)(4), they don’t publicly disclose who they are — but they recieved dozens of donations in FYE 2019 that tallied five or six digits. All that is known is what has been disclosed and what has been pieced together from cross-referencing other organizations' tax returns.

If America Votes' latest numbers are any indication, and judging by the fact that the 2020 elections were the most expensive in history, it doesn’t seem likely the flood of dark money isn’t going to subside any time soon — in fact it seems the tide is rising. As for more recent numbers that directly influenced the 2020 races, we won’t know those until 2021 at the earliest.

Stay tuned to MCSC Network for political finance news as it breaks.