Following the DonorsTrust money trail [Center for Public Integrity, 2013-02-14 via Archive.org
[source]
SOURCE: Wikipedia, 2020-05-28
See also [re: donor-advised funds]: National Philanthropic Trust | Philanthropy Roundtable | Tides Foundation.
ONTOLOGIES:
DonorsTrust is an American non-profit donor-advised fund. It was founded in 1999 with the goal of "safeguarding the intent of libertarian and conservative donors." As a donor advised fund, DonorsTrust is not legally required to disclose the identity of its donors, and most of its donors remain anonymous. It distributes funds to various conservative and libertarian organizations. It is affiliated with Donors CapitalFund, another donor-advised fund. In September 2015, Lawson R. Bader was announced as the new President of both DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. Bader was formerly President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute and Vice President at the Mercatus Center.
DonorsTrust is a 501(c)(3) organization. As a public charity and a donor-advised fund, DonorsTrust offers clients a variety of tax advantages compared to a private foundation.
DonorsTrust accepts donations from charitable foundations and individuals. Grants from DonorsTrust are based on the preferences of the original contributor, and the organization assures clients that their contributions will never be used to support politically liberal causes. As a donor advised fund, DonorsTrust can offer anonymity to individual donors, with respect to their donations to DonorsTrust, as well as with respect to an individual donor's ultimate grantee.
As a donor advised fund and public charity, DonorsTrust accepts cash or assets from donors, and in turn creates a separate account for the donor, who may recommend disbursements from the fund to other public charities. DonorsTrust requires an initial deposit of $10,000 or more. DonorsTrust is associated with Donors Capital Fund. DonorsTrust refers clients to Donors Capital Fund if the client plans to maintain a balance of $1 million or more. DonorsTrust president Lawson Bader said the goal of the organization is to "safeguard the intent of libertarian and conservative donors," ensuring that funds are used only to promote "liberty through limited government, responsibility, and free enterprise."
DonorsTrust was established in 1999 by Whitney Lynn Ball. According to DonorsTrust, the organization was founded by a group of donors and nonprofit executives who were "actively engaged in supporting and promoting a free society as understood in America's founding documents."
In early 2013, DonorsTrust was the subject of investigative journalism reports by the British newspapers The Independent and The Guardian, and the United States entities Mother Jones and the Center for Public Integrity. Mother Jones described DonorsTrust as having funded a conservative public policy agenda in the areas of labor unions, climate science, public schools, and economic regulations.
As of 2013, DonorsTrust had 193 contributors, mostly individuals, and some foundations.
The Charles G. Koch Foundation and the Knowledge and Progress Fund, another of the Koch family foundations, contributed $3.3 million to DonorsTrust between 2007 and 2011. The Knowledge and Progress Fund contributed $4.5 million to DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund between 2006 and 2012. DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund were the only grantees of the Knowledge and Progress Fund through 2013, according to The Independent. The Koch brothers, Charles and David Koch, were the top contributors to DonorsTrust in 2011, according to an analysis by the Columbia Journalism Review published by Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. In 2010, DonorsTrust received a US$2 million grant from the Donors Capital Fund.
DonorsTrust account holders have included the John M. Olin Foundation, the Castle Rock Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, and the Bradley Foundation. The Bradley family contributed $650,000 between 2001 and 2010. The DeVos family foundation contributed $1 million in 2009 and $1.5 million in 2010 to DonorsTrust.
The Searle Freedom Trust granted -- via Donors Trust -- $597,500 between 2005 and 2010, $650,000 in 2013, and $500,000 in 2015 [a total of $1,747,500] to fund the Project on Fair Representation.
The Project on Fair Representation is a Washington, D.C.-based legal defense fund that recruited plaintiffs in lawsuits to challenge affirmative action in college admissions policies, including the United States Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas and at Harvard University.
In 2010, the Donors Capital Fund granted US$2 million to DonorsTrust.
From its founding in 1999 through 2013, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund distributed nearly $400 million, and through 2015 $740 million, to various nonprofit organizations, including numerous conservative and libertarian causes. DonorsTrust requires that recipients are registered with the US Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public charity. Whitney Ball, the former president of DonorsTrust, told The Guardian in 2013 that DonorsTrust has about 1,600 grantees. In 2014, Ball said that 70 to 75 percent of grants go to public policy organizations, with the rest going to more conventional charities such as social service and educational organizations.
In 2010, the Americans for Prosperity Foundation received a DonorsTrust grant of $7 million, nearly half of the Foundation's revenue that year.
Other DonorsTrust recipients have included:
DonorsTrust paid the legal fees of the Project on Fair Representation, a Washington, D.C.-based legal defense fund that assembled the plaintiff's legal team in Fisher v. University of Texas, a 2013 United States Supreme Court case concerning affirmative action college admissions policies. In 2011, the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity, an online news organization, received $6.3 million in DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund grants, 95 percent of the center's revenue that year.
Other DonorsTrust recipients have included the Foundation for Jewish Camp, Families Against Mandatory Minimums, the James Randi Educational Foundation, the Marijuana Policy Project, and PragerU.
DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund distributed nearly $120 million to 102 think tanks and action groups skeptical of the science behind climate change between 2002 and 2010. According to a 2013 analysis by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, between 2003 and 2013 DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund combined were the largest funders of organizations opposed to restrictions on carbon emissions, which Brulle calls the "climate change counter-movement." According to Brulle, by 2009, approximately one-quarter of the funding of the "climate counter-movement" was from the DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund.
As of 2010, DonorsTrust grants to conservative and libertarian organizations active in climate change issues included more than
$17 million to the American Enterprise Institute, a think tank;
$13.5 million to the Heartland Institute, a public policy think tank; and
$11 million to Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group.
In 2011, the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), the conservative Washington, D.C.-based non-profit organization, received $1.2 million from DonorsTrust, 40 percent of CFACT's revenue in that year.
Climate change writer Wei-Hock "Willie" Soon received hundreds of thousands of dollars from DonorsTrust.
In 2015, The Guardian reported that DonorsTrust gave $4.3 million to the Competitive Enterprise Institute over three years.
Between 2008 and 2013, DonorsTrust granted $10 million to the State Policy Network (SPN), a national network of conservative and libertarian think tanks focused on state-level policy. SPN used the grants to incubate new think tanks in Arkansas, Rhode Island and Florida. DonorsTrust also issued grants to SPN's affiliates at the state level during the same period. The American Legislative Exchange Council, a nonprofit organization of conservative state legislators and private sector representatives that drafts and shares model state-level legislation, is a DonorsTrust recipient.
DonorsTrust donated $1.7 million to Project Veritas, a group run by conservative activist James O'Keefe, which attempts through undercover video stings to demonstrate the biases of mainstream media organizations and liberal groups. DonorsTrust's relationship with Project Veritas came under scrutiny in 2017 after Project Veritas had one of its operative contact The Washington Post, falsely claiming to have been impregnated by Roy Moore while she was a teenager.
following added 2021-08-07 - reformat
Project Veritas (Wikipedia)
Culture - Cultural studies - Media culture - Mass Media - Journalism - Citizen journalism - News outlets - Project Veritas (RED FLAG! Project Veritas is a DonorsTrust-funded, 501(c)(3) disinformation news portal! | Project Veritas is an American far-right activist group founded by James O'Keefe in 2010. The group produces deceptively edited videos of its undercover operations, which use secret recordings in an effort to discredit mainstream media organizations and progressive groups. Project Veritas also uses entrapment to generate bad publicity for its targets, and has propagated disinformation and conspiracy theories in its videos and operations. Targets of Project Veritas include Planned Parenthood, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), NPR, CNN, and The Washington Post. In 2009, Project Veritas associates published misleading videos that depicted ACORN employees providing advice on concealing illegal activity, causing ACORN to shut down after losing funding; ACORN was cleared of wrongdoing by the Attorney General of California in 2010, and the associates paid a total of $150,000 in settlements to an ACORN employee who sued for defamation. NPR CEO Vivian Schiller resigned in 2013 after Project Veritas released a deceptively edited video portraying another NPR executive making controversial comments about the Tea Party movement and NPR's federal funding. Project Veritas unsuccessfully attempted to mislead The Washington Post into publishing false information about the Roy Moore sexual misconduct allegations in 2017; the Post won a Pulitzer Prize after uncovering the operation. As a non-governmental organization, Project Veritas is financed by conservative fund DonorsTrust (which provided over $6.6 million from 2011 to 2019) and other supporters including the Donald J. Trump Foundation. In 2020, The New York Times published an exposé detailing Project Veritas' use of spies recruited by Erik Prince, to infiltrate "Democratic congressional campaigns, labor organizations and other groups considered hostile to the Trump agenda". The Times piece notes O'Keefe's and Prince's close links to the Trump administration, and details contributions such as a $1 million transfer of funds from an undisclosed source to support their work. The findings were based in part on discovery documents in a case brought by the American Federation of Teachers, Michigan, which had been infiltrated by Project Veritas. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Veritas | see also: Culture - Cultural studies - Media culture - Mass Media - Journalism - Citizen journalism - News outlets - Project Veritas)
In 2018, DonorsTrust funded more than 99% of the Judicial Education Project, a legal alias for Honest Elections Project and The 85 Fund.
See also: Conservative 'dark money' network rebranded to push voting restrictions before 2020 election
The Board of Directors of DonorsTrust includes [captured 2020-10-12]:
Kimberly O. Dennis, Chairman -- President and CEO, Searle Freedom Trust
Kim Dennis has served as president and CEO of the Searle Freedom Trust, a grantmaking foundation established by the late Daniel C. Searle to support public policy research, since 1996. For five of those years, she also directed the National Research Initiative, a Searle-funded program of AEI. Kim first began working in the grantmaking arena in 1980 as a staffer for the John M. Olin Foundation, and later became the first executive director of the Philanthropy Roundtable. She co-founded and serves as chairman of the board of DonorsTrust. She has also served on the boards of the Arthur N. Rupe Foundation, the Earhart Foundation, the W. H. Brady Foundation, the Philanthropy Roundtable, the Property and Environment Research Center, and George Mason University.
James Piereson, Vice Chairman -- conservative scholar and President, William E. Simon Foundation
James Piereson is president of the William E. Simon Foundation, a private grantmaking foundation located in New York City. The foundation has broad charitable interests in education, religion, and problems of youth. Jim is also a senior fellow at The Manhattan Institute in New York where he is director of the Center for the American University. Jim was executive director and trustee of the John M. Olin Foundation from 1985 until the end of 2005 when, following longstanding plans, the foundation disbursed its remaining assets and closed its doors. Jim is the author of several book including Camelot and the Cultural Revolution: How the Assassination of John F. Kennedy Shattered American Liberalism (Encounter Books, 2007). He serves on the boards of several other tax exempt institutions, including: The Pinkerton Foundation, the TWS Foundation, the Center for Individual Rights, The Philanthropy Roundtable, the Foundation for Cultural Review, and DonorsTrust. Jim earned a B.A. degree (1968) and a Ph.D. degree (1973) in Political Science from Michigan State University. He lives in Sleepy Hollow, NY, with his wife, Patricia, and son.
Lawson R. Bader, President and CEO, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund | DeSmog.com entry
Since 2015, Lawson Bader serves as president and CEO of DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund. Before coming to DonorsTrust, he amassed twenty years' experience leading free-market research and advocacy groups including the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He began his career in DC in as special assistant at the U.S. Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs, then worked as a legislative analyst/paralegal with Pierson, Semmes & Finley, and managed government relations at SRI International. He is a former weekly columnist with Human Events, and is a current member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council and is a Kiplinger contributor. He serves on the governing boards of Atlas Network, State Policy Network, and Oakseed Ministries International. Lawson earned a BA in political science from Wheaton College (IL) and an MA in public policy from The Johns Hopkins University.
Thomas E. Beach -- Founder & Managing Director, Beach Investment Council
Tom Beach is the founder and Managing Director of Beach Investment Counsel, which manages the financial assets of high net worth families and foundations. Prior to forming Beach Investment Counsel he held various portfolio management and executive positions with a major institutional investment management firm. He served as chief executive officer of its mutual funds and as a member of its three person management committee. Tom earned a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics from the University of Michigan and an MBA from Harvard Business School. He currently serves as Chairman of Reason Foundation and also of The Property and Environment Research Center. He is a director of Pennsylvania Lumberman's Mutual Insurance Company and previously was a Director or Trustee of the Haverford School, Eisenhower Fellowships, Philadelphia Youth Tennis, the Laurentian Capital Corporation and The International Lawn Tennis Club of the United States.
George G.H. Coates, Jr. -- Chairman of the Board, The Commonwealth Foundation
George G. H. Coates, Jr is a 25-year veteran of the fine wine and beverage alcohol industry, where he held executive roles on the distribution side of the industry with Southern Wine & Spirits (now Southern/Glaziers) and on the supply side with W. J. Deutsch & Sons (now Deutsch Family Wine & Spirits). In 2012, he and a partner launched an importing company focused on supply chain efficiencies allowing high quality wine to be delivered to the consumer at a lower cost than traditional shipping and packaging would allow, which was subsequently sold to investors. George serves as board chair for The Commonwealth Foundation, a Harrisburg-based state-level free-market think tank. He serves as a board member of Americans for Fair Treatment, an advocacy group focused on educating, equipping and empowering public servants to receive fair treatment and transparency from public sector unions; the Chestnut Hill Conservancy and Historical Society, a local open space and architectural conservancy protecting the nation's first urban accredited land trust; and the Henry Foundation for Botanical Research, the first research botanical garden founded by a woman, Mary Gibson Henry. A Philadelphia native, George studied at The Haverford School in Haverford, PA and Cornell University in Ithaca, NY. He resides in both Philadelphia and Washington, the latter where his wife Dr. Victoria C. G. Coates serves as a Deputy Assistant to the President and Senior Director for Middle Eastern Affairs on the National Security Council staff. They have two children and one dog, all three of which migrate with them occasionally.
[ExposedByCMD.org, 2021-11-19] "Dark Money ATM" Pumped Over $137 Million Into Right-Wing Groups in 2020.
[ExposedByCMD.org, 2021-11-19] DonorsTrust Gives $600k Donation to White Nationalist Hate Group.
For the second year in a row, the right wing's favorite dark money donation vehicle has given an unprecedented sum to a notorious white nationalist hate group.
New tax records obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) reveal that nonprofit charity DonorsTrust bankrolled the New Century Foundation - an alias for American Renaissance (website / magazine), a white nationalist organization led by Jared Taylor - with $600,000 in 2020. That amount exceeds the New Century Foundation's total annual revenue in any year since 2010.
American Renaissance, which is designated by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) as a white nationalist hate group, is Jared Taylor's online magazine and is known for creating the black-on-white crime myth, which has inspired terrorists including Dylann Roof to commit mass murder.
"You don't exactly need a Ph.D. to understand why Jared Taylor is a white nationalist," said Michael Edison Hayden, a senior investigative reporter and spokesperson for the SPLC. "Jared Taylor believes that Black people are less intelligent, less empathetic, and less human than white people. He will tell you that with his own words and does so every day on his website, which is so grotesquely and openly racist I sometimes feel nauseated reading it."
DonorsTrust [DonorsTrust] is a fund associated with the Kochs, the Mercers, and other right-wing billionaire families. It is a donor-advised fund sponsor, meaning that it manages individual charitable accounts for its clients for a fee. These clients, who can hide their identities from the public by using DonorsTrust, "advise" DonorsTrust about where the money should go, but the organization has total legal authority to decide which organizations will receive funding.
In 2020, DonorsTrust also gave $75,000 to the foundation behind the prominent white nationalist hate group VDARE, the tax records show. The previous year, as Center for Media and Democracy (CMD) first reported, DonorsTrust gave over $1.5 million to the VDARE Foundation. The amount was far greater than the VDARE's previous annual revenue record and likely helped VDARE purchase a castle in West Virginia. In total, VDARE took in a whopping $4.3 million in 2019, as CMD and the SPLC reported.
VDARE, led by Peter Brimelow.html, promotes the white genocide conspiracy theory, a central tenet of white nationalism, has published apologia for white nationalist terrorists, and regularly churns out anti-immigrant propaganda. "There's ethnic specialization in crime," said Peter Brimelow at a 2017 event hosted by American Renaissance, "and Hispanics do specialize in rape, particularly of children. They're very prone to it, compared to other groups."
As the American conservative movement, inspired by the racism and conspiracy theories of former president Donald Trump, moves further and further to the right, DonorsTrust has dramatically increased its funding of white nationalist hate groups. Before 2019, the charity had not donated to such groups, although for some time it has been financing anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and anti-LGBTQ hate groups. As CMD reported, the trend continued in 2020: DonorsTrust doled out large sums to the Center for Security Policy ($1.8 million), the David Horowitz Freedom Center (nearly $200,000), and the Pacific Justice Institute ($74,000), among other extremist organizations.
[ ... snip ... ]
[2020-10-13] "Must-watch:" Senator Sheldon Whitehouse Schools Amy Coney Barrett on Dark Money. Superb presentation illustrating Republican Party and dark money influencers on vested special interests (abolition of: affordable health care, access to abortions, LGBTQ+ rights, judicial freedom; concentration of obfuscated power; ...).
[2020-07-31] Here Are the Billionaires Funding Trump's Voter Suppression Lawsuits. Dozens of billionaires have donated to the RNC's legal fund that is being used to fight against expanded access to mail voting.
Also siding with the RNC on the lawsuits is a network of conservative "dark money" nonprofits tied through personnel and funding to groups that have worked to build support for the confirmation of Trump's Supreme Court nominees and to elect conservative judges to state supreme courts.
One such group that recently emerged, the Honest Election Project [Donors Trust], is a rebrand of the shadowy Judicial Education Project [DonorsTrust], according to OpenSecrets and The Guardian.
The Judicial Education Project is established as a charity, allowing it to keep the sources of its millions of dollars in annual revenue hidden. In addition to its election lawsuit work as the Honest Elections Project, it makes grants to conservative groups including SpeechNow, which helped establish the legal basis for super PACs through a 2010 case against the Federal Election Commission (FEC).
The Honest Election Project also funds Private Citizen, a First Amendment legal expense fund, and the George Mason University Foundation, a law school that established conservative ideological law centers and hired multiple Federalist Society-linked academics after receiving millions in donations from the Charles Koch Foundation.
The Honest Elections Project, which shares a law firm with the RNC, Virginia-based Consovoy McCarthy Park PPLC, has filed multiple briefs in states and federal courts defending states against lawsuits from Democrat-aligned groups that seek to expand mail voting or ease requirements on ballot signatures. It also worked to force states to clean up voter registration rolls, a process that critics have labeled "purging." The group recently spent $250,000 to run ads on cable news channels claiming that Democrats have sought to expand mail voting for partisan advantage and advocating for limited or no changes to voting laws to accommodate voters during the pandemic.
According to OpenSecrets and The Guardian, the Judicial Education Project (the Honest Elections Project's alias) has been funded almost entirely by DonorsTrust, a donor-advised fund sponsor that specializes in helping conservative donors anonymously fund "sensitive or controversial issues" while also securing special tax advantages. Donors Trust has been a major funder of groups in the Koch network, including Americans for Prosperity, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), and the State Policy Network, and in 2018 it provided 99% of Judicial Education Project's funding.
[2020-05-27] Honest Elections Project: Conservative "dark money" network rebranded to push voting restrictions before 2020 election
[theIntercept.com, 2020-05-23]: [United in Purpose] Inside the Influential Evangelical Group Mobilizing to Reelect Trump
Funding to British-based Institute of Economic Affairs campaigns has been provided -- among other sources -- by the U.S.-based dark money nonprofit funder DonorsTrust.
Return to Persagen.com