The Voter Engagement Fund is a nominal voter advocacy group created by the New Venture Fund, a nonprofit component of the for-profit consulting firm, Arabella Advisors.

New Venture Fund

For more information, see New Venture Fund.

The New Venture Fund is one of four nonprofit grantmaking groups formed by Arabella Advisors, a liberal philanthropic consultancy. The Fund invents advocacy organizations which exist as webpages and trade names but have no physical location, staff, funding records, or tax returns. These nominal organizations lend their names to other advocacy groups to increase the perceived public support for left-of-center political goals.

Activities

The Voter Engagement Fund has no online presence except a webpage (other “voter engagement funds” that appear in searches are components of separate voter outreach groups). ¹

The Fund’s webpage was created in February 2019 by designer Joe Pahl,² a front-end developer for Revolution Messaging, a left-of-center advertising and public relations firm. ³ Despite being up for a year, as of early 2020 the webpage presents a barebones description of the organization with no links or secondary pages.

The webpage lists no staff besides Program Director Kim Rogers, a campaign director active in numerous left-of-center nonprofits. Rogers is the Program Director of the left-of-center voter mobilization nonprofits Voter Registration Project, Voter Registration Project Fund, and Register America. ⁴

The Fund’s stated objectives on the webpage are based around vague voter-engagement goals, with no concrete courses of action. The only location given is for the New Venture Fund in Washington, D.C. ⁵

The webpage lists six organizations as “Partners” that fund the Voter Engagement Fund, but no figures or grant objectives are given. ⁶ There is no evidence on the websites for these organizations or in any news stories that these groups ever gave money to the Voter Engagement Fund.

As a fiscally sponsored project of New Venture Fund, the Voter Engagement Fund has no tax records and is not listed as a grant recipient in the New Venture Fund’s tax returns. ⁷

1. “Voter Engagement Fund.” Google. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://www.google.com/search?sxsrf=ACYBGNRHLcIIDULqEyOz2-zLHFFCCjUHdg%3A1580957609933&source=hp&ei=qX87XqC6NpK55gKDp4u4CQ&q=%22voter+engagement+fund%22&oq=%22voter+engagement+fund%22&gs_l=psy-ab.3..0i30.2440.10921..11127…7.0..0.107.1118.14j1……0….1..gws-wiz…..10..35i39j0i67j0i131j0j0i131i20i263j35i362i39j0i20i263j0i22i30.YTcs44vkDes&ved=0ahUKEwjgsviF9rvnAhWSnFkKHYPTApcQ4dUDCAg&uact=5.
2. “Voter Engagement Fund.” Joepahl.com. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://joepahl.com/2019/02/04/voter-engagement-fund/.
3. “Joe Pahl.” Revolution Messaging. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://revolutionmessaging.com/team/joe-pahl/.
4. “Voter Engagement Fund.” Voter Engagement Fund. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://voterengagementfund.org/.
5. “Voter Engagement Fund.” Voter Engagement Fund. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://voterengagementfund.org/.
6. “Our Partners.” Voter Engagement Fund. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://voterengagementfund.org/#partners.
7. “Return on Organization Exempt from Taxes 2017 (Form 990).” ProPublica. Accessed February 5, 2020. https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/display_990/205806345/02_2019_prefixes_20-20%2F205806345_201712_990_2019022216117830.