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For-profit

Arabella Advisors

Website:

www.arabellaadvisors.com
Location:

Washington, DC
Formation:

2005
Type:

Philanthropy Consulting Firm
Founder:

Eric Kessler
Chief Executive Officer:

Sampriti Ganguli
Headquarters:

Washington, D.C.
Other Locations:

California

Illinois

New York

Washington
Managed Funds:

New Venture Fund

Windward Fund

Sixteen Thirty Fund

Hopewell Fund

Arabella Advisors (commonly called “Arabella”) is a philanthropic consulting company that guides the strategy, advocacy, impact investing, and management for high-dollar left-leaning nonprofits and individuals. [1] Arabella provides these clients with a number of services that ease their operations and that enable them to enact policies focused on environmentalism and other left-of-center issues. [2] The company was founded in 2005 by Eric Kessler, a Clinton administration alumnus and long-time staffer at the League of Conservation Voters who remains a senior managing partner at the firm. [3]

Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits. These include the New Venture Fund, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the Hopewell Fund, and the Windward Fund. These nonprofits have collectively hosted hundreds of left-wing policy and advocacy organizations (referred to by critics as “pop-up groups” because they are little more than websites). In 2018, Arabella’s four nonprofits reported combined revenues of $635 million. [4] Altogether, between 2013 and 2018 the nonprofits reported combined revenues of just under $2.3 billion and total expenditures of $1.8 billion. [5] [6] A January 2020 profile of Arabella Advisors’ network by Inside Philanthropy noted that the company “handles over $400 million in philanthropic investments and advises on several billion dollars in overall resources.” [7]

Between 2008 and 2018, Arabella’s nonprofits paid the company nearly $103 million in contracting and management services fees. [8] Many of Arabella’s top officials, including firm founder Eric Kessler, are principal officers on the nonprofits’ boards of directors.

Arabella has implemented over 300 different “pop-up” projects targeting a range of issues, including net neutrality, free speech, abortion access, Obamacare, and President Donald Trump’s judicial nominees. [9] The company specifically highlights projects in which it has helped its clients divest millions of dollars from traditional energy companies, invest in risky experimental companies, boycott the historically Republican-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce, enact a ballot initiative that freed 4,000 criminals in California, and lobby for a labor union-friendly policy in Oregon that was supported by the United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Oregon Nurses Association. [10]

Arabella and its nonprofit network have been criticized as “dark money” funders both for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing organizations and for hosting hundreds of “pop-up groups”—websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits that are really projects of an Arabella-run nonprofit. [11] However, Arabella’s nonprofit network also manages a number of “philanthropic projects” engaged in genuine charity, not political advocacy. [12]

In November 2019, Politico criticized the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) advocacy wing of Arabella’s nonprofit network, as a “little-known,” “massive ‘dark money’ group [that] boosted Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections with $140 million. “The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states,” the left-leaning website reported. Politico also noted that Sixteen Thirty Fund’s biggest single donation (made anonymously) was for $51.7 million, “more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected,” adding that “the group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit.” [13] However, Politico failed to fully connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors’ nonprofit network.

The left-leaning Washington Post further criticized Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund as a “big campaign donor” in a November 24, 2019 opinion by the editorial board, which called on Congress to change nonprofit disclosure laws, noting in particular a $26.7 million anonymous donation to the Fund. [14] However, the Post also failed to connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

In a November 24, 2019 letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Capital Research Center (CRC) president Scott Walter identified the $26.7 million donation as originating with the New Venture Fund, the largest of Arabella’s in-house nonprofits, and confirmed Politico’s suspicion that the Sixteen Thirty Fund is “part of a larger network of dark money.” [15]

Organizational Overview

Arabella Advisors is a strategic consulting and management company that works with individual donors and large left-of-center nonprofits. [16]

Founded in 2005, Arabella has 150 employees. [17] [18] It maintains offices across the country (though its headquarters are in Washington, D.C.) and helps its clients implement center-left political agendas through sometimes risky programming investments or the creation and incubation of new agenda-driven initiatives or organizations. [19] Arabella claims to have carried out more than 150 domestic and international projects for clients with combined assets worth more than $100 billion. [20]

The company touts that it helps its donor clients develop and implement programs and campaigns that produce left-of-center-social and policy changes. The company brings its wide-range of left-wing nonprofits together to collaborate and exchange ideas on how to implement left-of-center policies. [21]

Arabella manages over $75 million in strategic grants for clients who seek to use their money to implement left-of-center policies. [22] It also guides the “impact investing” of its clients who seek to invest their money in ways that further a left-leaning mission. [23]

In 2017, in response to the election of President Donald Trump, Arabella founder Eric Kessler called for donors to increase their support for organizations that planned to take bold actions on liberal environmentalist, gender-preferential, and government-funded healthcare policies. [24]

“Fake” Groups

In practice, Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship means sponsoring hundreds of “fake” groups via Arabella’s four in-house nonprofits; these “fake” groups are little more than websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits. Since Arabella’s inception, it’s sponsored roughly 340 such groups. These “fake” groups rarely disclose their relationship to Arabella Advisors or any of its four in-house nonprofits; nevertheless, many of them accept donations from the public, funds which go to Arabella’s nonprofits. This system also allows these groups to hide their funders, since it’s virtually impossible to trace individual grants to Arabella’s four nonprofits to any particular “fake” group. [25]

Fiscal Sponsorship: The Arabella Advisors Network

Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits, three of which are 501(c)(3) entities and one of which is a 501(c)(4) organization. All serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center activist groups, almost none of which become fully-fledged standalone nonprofits. [26] Since the network’s inception, Arabella’s four “sister” nonprofits have sponsored roughly 340 such groups targeting a number of different issue areas, including healthcare, net neutrality, abortion access, gun control President Donald Trump’s U.S. Supreme Court confirmations, and others. [27] [28]

These four nonprofits form a single network that provides funding to other left-of-center nonprofits as well as fiscal sponsorship (or “incubation”) services to hundreds of activist groups associated with Arabella Advisors:

The New Venture Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit and the oldest of Arabella Advisors’ four nonprofits, originally created in 2006 as the “Arabella Legacy Fund.” The New Venture Fund is the largest of Arabella’s nonprofits by revenues, expenditures, and number of activist groups it’s sponsored; as such, it’s been described as the “flagship” of Arabella’s nonprofit network. [29] The New Venture Fund claims it has sponsored over 280 projects across a range of left-of-center issues. [30] In 2018, NVF reported $405.3 million in revenues. [31]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund is Arabella’s sole 501(c)(4) advocacy nonprofit and the second-oldest of its nonprofits, created in 2009. The Sixteen Thirty Fund sponsors lobbyist groups such as the judicial advocacy group Demand Justice, and engages in political advocacy, including independent expenditures targeting Republican politicians during elections. [32] [33] [34] In 2018, the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $143.8 million in revenues. [35]

The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015 that primarily sponsors activist groups focused on abortion access and other social issues. [36] In 2018, the Hopewell Fund reported revenues of $66.9 million. [37]

The Windward Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed in 2015 that primarily sponsors environmentalist groups. [38] In 2018, the Windward Fund reported revenues of $19.2 million. [39]

Network Financial Overview

Arabella Advisors’ four “Funds” have grown rapidly since their inception, reporting total revenues of $2.27 billion and expenditures of $1.76 billion between 2013 and 2018. [40] A summary is available below:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Revenues
Grand Total:$2,274,520,693
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2018$405,281,263$143,837,877$66,892,414$19,238,519$635,250,073
2017$358,858,641 $79,559,836 $130,616,293 $12,656,323$581,691,093
2016 $357,581,316 $21,258,592 $16,552,056 $15,812,062$411,204,026
2015 $318,405,056 $5,617,209 $6,895,271 $1,297,000$332,214,536
2014 $179,424,945$16,523,735--$195,948,680
2013 $112,942,320 $5,269,965--$118,212,285
Sum:$1,732,493,541$272,067,214$220,956,034$49,003,904
Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Expenditures
Grand Total:$1,769,202,388
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2018$373,007,693$141,396,752$78,113,237$13,579,180$606,096,862
2017 $329,784,536 $46,893,083 $28,843,397 $11,024,111$416,645,127
2016 $264,546,947 $19,660,860$7,818,000 $7,452,824$299,478,631
2015 $214,351,188$8,660,897  $839,522$58,293$223,909,900
2014$134,487,602  $10,880,643  --$145,368,245
2013$74,982,490 $2,721,133--$77,703,623
Sum:$1,391,160,456$230,213,368$115,614,156$32,114,408

Between 2008 and 2018, Arabella’s four nonprofits paid the company at least a combined $102.9 million in management fees. A summary is provided below (note that the IRS does not require nonprofits to report payments of less than $100,000 to consultants): [41]

Arabella Network: Contracting Fees
Grand Total:$102,934,284
New Venture FundSixteen Thirty FundHopewell FundWindward FundAnnual Total
2018$18,920,327$3,483,127$3,763,563$1,037,742$27,204,759
2017$17,678,314$2,066,194$1,507,771$980,466$22,232,745
2016$13,167,207$789,891$807,425$740,180$15,504,703
2015$13,167,207$239,739$170,953-$13,577,899
2014$8,299,366$342,066--$8,641,432
2013$5,509,532$201,906--$5,771,438
2012$4,246,022---$4,246,022
2011$2,505,465---$2,505,465
2010$1,246,232---$1,246,232
2009$1,345,054$162,604--$1,507,658
2008$555,931---$555,931
Total:$86,640,657$7,285,527$6,249,712$2,758,388

New Venture Fund

For more information, see New Venture Fund (Nonprofit)

The New Venture Fund (NVF) (formerly the Arabella Legacy Fund) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in October 2006. The group funds a number of center-left causes, but is primarily known for hosting over 280 fiscally sponsored projects. [42] Former Arabella Advisors managing director Lee Bodner serves as president of NVF.

The NVF sponsors the Media Democracy Fund, a group supported by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations, and which pushes for left-of-center internet-related policies, including net neutrality regulations. [43] [44]

Sixteen Thirty Fund

For more information, see Sixteen Thirty Fund (Nonprofit)

The Sixteen Thirty Fund is a 501(c)(4) nonprofit created in 2009. The Fund provides similar fiscal sponsorship services to that of the New Venture Fund and Arabella’s other nonprofits; but the Sixteen Thirty Fund’s projects are often hosted as lobbying arms in conjunction with an “education” or fundraising arm hosted by one of its 501(c)(3) “sister” nonprofits (usually the New Venture Fund). [45]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been described as a “progressive advocacy group” because of its lobbying efforts, and the group has created a number of offshoot entities that advocate for liberal policies. [46] One such group, Americans For Tax Fairness Action Fund, advocates for “progressive tax reform.” Another organization, Make It Work Action, pushes for liberal labor policies. [47]

The Sixteen Thirty Fund funneled nearly millions of dollars from Atlantic Philanthropies to “Unity ’09: Moving a Progressive Policy Agenda in America” a liberal effort to support President Barack Obama’s healthcare policy (popularly known as Obamacare). [48] In 2017, the Sixteen Thirty Fund gave over $600,000 to the left-wing Center for Community Change Action, a group organizing opposition to the Trump administration. [49]

Hopewell Fund

For more information, see Hopewell Fund (Nonprofit)

The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015. It primarily manages pro-abortion projects, including Equity Forward, which attacks Trump administration “political appointees at the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) for opposing the left-wing abortion agenda.” [50]

Windward Fund

For more information, see Windward Fund (Nonprofit)

The Windward Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit created in 2015. The Windward Fund primarily sponsors environmentalist projects, such as the Climate Resilience Fund.

Issue Areas

Arabella’s main issue areas focus on left-of-center environmentalist, gender, and food policies. [51]

Shareholder Advocacy and Oil Divestment

Arabella has issued reports touting how nonprofits use shareholder advocacy to push for environmentalist prerogatives including carbon reduction mandates and a boycott against the Republican-leaning U.S. Chamber of Commerce. [52] Arabella also pushes for financial divestment from traditional energy companies in favor of experimental environmentalist energy companies and issued a report touting that companies holding $1.3 trillion in assets have pledged “to both divest and invest in clean energy and climate solutions.” [53]

Mandatory Paid Sick Leave

Arabella touts that it worked to create the Everybody Benefits Coalition in 2012, a project of Family Forward Oregon funded by the Rockefeller Family Fund, to lobby for a statewide paid sick leave mandate in Oregon. The coalition included a number of labor-aligned advocacy groups including the Working Families Organization alongside labor unions such as United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Oregon Nurses Association. [54]

Looser Sentencing Laws

In 2014, Arabella coordinated grant funding from a number of left-leaning nonprofits including the Ford Foundation, George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF), the Public Welfare Foundation, and other to form the Vote Safe 501(c)(4), which successfully funded a $10 million ballot initiative campaign to loosen California sentencing laws and release approximately 4,000 convicted criminals. [55]

Other Issues

The company also helps its clients carryout programs across other left-of-center issue areas including economic, education and healthcare-based issues; “equity and social justice” issues; and global redistribution issues. [56]

Leadership

Founder

Eric Kessler is the founder of and a principal and senior managing director at Arabella Advisors. He also serves as board chair of the New Venture Fund and president of the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Kessler previously served as the national field director for the League of Conservation Voters and as a White House appointee managing conservation issues for President Bill Clinton. [57]

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Principals

Sampriti Ganguli is the chief executive officer of Arabella Advisors. [58]

Bruce Boyd is a co-principal and senior managing director at Arabella. Previously Boyd worked for 13 years as executive director of the Illinois chapter of the Nature Conservancy. [59] Boyd is an adviser to the New Venture Fund and a board member for the Hopewell Fund and the Windward Fund.

Staff

Scott Nielsen is Arabella’s managing director of advocacy. [60] He also serves on the board of advisors at the Funders Committee For Civic Participation, a donors’ trade group which Arabella Advisors is a member of. Nielsen has also worked with the MacArthur Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Democracy Alliance, the State Infrastructure Fund, and the Open Society Foundations. [61]

Controversies

“Dark Money” Criticism

Arabella and its nonprofit network have been criticized as “dark money” funders both for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars to left-wing organizations and for hosting hundreds of “pop-up groups”—websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits that are really projects of an Arabella-run nonprofit. [62]

In November 2019, Politico criticized the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the 501(c)(4) advocacy wing of Arabella’s nonprofit network, as a “little-known,” “massive ‘dark money’ group [that] boosted Democrats” in the 2018 midterm elections with $140 million. “The money contributed to efforts ranging from fighting Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh and other Trump judicial nominees to boosting ballot measures raising the minimum wage and changing laws on voting and redistricting in numerous states,” the left-leaning website reported. Politico also noted that Sixteen Thirty Fund’s biggest single donation (made anonymously) was for $51.7 million, “more than the group had ever raised before in an entire year before President Donald Trump was elected,” adding that “the group’s 2018 fundraising surpassed any amount ever raised by a left-leaning political nonprofit.” [63] However, Politico failed to tie the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

The left-leaning Washington Post further criticized Arabella’s Sixteen Thirty Fund as a “big campaign donor” in a November 24, 2019 opinion by the editorial board, which called on Congress to change nonprofit disclosure laws, noting in particular a $26.7 million anonymous donation to the Fund. [64] However, the Post also failed to connect the Sixteen Thirty Fund to Arabella Advisors and its other three nonprofits.

In a November 24, 2019 letter to the editor published by the Washington Post, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter identified the $26.7 million donation as originating with the New Venture Fund, the largest of Arabella’s in-house nonprofits, and confirmed Politico’s suspicion that the Sixteen Thirty Fund is “part of a larger network of dark money.” [65]

References

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  51. “Arabella Advisors.” Devex. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.devex.com/organizations/arabella-advisors-62136 ^
  52. “Assets in Action: How Catholic Institutions Are Using Their Investments To Counter Climate Change.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/Assets-in-Action-9.9-final.pdf ^
  53. “The Global Fossil Fuel Divestment and Clean Energy Investment Movement.” December 2016. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/Global_Divestment_Report_2016.pdf ^
  54. Whelpton, Shelley and McArthur. Loren. “Bringing Workplace Policies Into The 21st Century.” Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Bringing-Workplace-Policies-Into-the-21st-Century.pdf ^
  55. Whelpton, Shelley and McArthur, Loren. “Ending The Era Of Mass Incarceration.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Californias-Proposition-47.pdf ^
  56. “Arabella Advisors.” Devex. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.devex.com/organizations/arabella-advisors-62136 ^
  57. “Our People.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/company/our-people/ ^
  58. “Our People.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/company/our-people/ ^
  59. “Our People.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/company/our-people/ ^
  60. “Our People.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/company/our-people/ ^
  61. “Our People.” Arabella Advisors. Accessed April 19, 2018. https://www.arabellaadvisors.com/company/our-people/ ^
  62. Hayden R. Ludwig. “Big Money in Dark Shadows: Arabella Advisors’ Half-billion-dollar ‘Dark Money’ Network.” Capital Research Center (DarkMoneyATM.org). https://darkmoneyatm.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/CRC_Arabella-Advisors-Dark-Money_small.pdf ^
  63. Scott Bland, Maggie Severns. “Documents reveal massive ‘dark-money’ group boosted Democrats in 2018.” Politico. November 19, 2019. Accessed January 7, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2019/11/19/dark-money-democrats-midterm-071725 ^
  64. Washington Post Editorial Board. “Big campaign donors have exploited a loophole. Congress must change the law.” Washington Post. November 24, 2019. Accessed January 7, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/big-campaign-donors-have-exploited-a-loophole-congress-must-change-the-law/2019/11/21/ab31cf3a-0bd6-11ea-bd9d-c628fd48b3a0_story.html ^
  65. Scott Walter. “Letter to the Editor: This organization traced the supposed ‘dark money’s’ origins.” Washington Post. November 24, 2019. Accessed January 7, 2020. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/this-organization-traced-the-supposed-dark-moneys-origins/2019/11/24/07d88e78-0d48-11ea-8054-289aef6e38a3_story.html ^

Directors, Employees & Supporters

  1. Sampriti Ganguli
    Chief Executive Officer
  2. Andrew Schulz
    General Counsel
  3. Scott Nielsen
    Director of Advocacy
  4. Bruce Boyd
    Principal and Senior Managing Director
  5. Eric Kessler
    Founder, Principal, and Senior Managing Director
  6. Lee Bodner
    Former Managing Director
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Arabella Advisors

1201 Connecticut Ave NW
#300
Washington, DC 20036