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 and principal at the firm. ^[3]

Arabella Advisors manages four nonprofits that serve as incubators and accelerators for a range of other left-of-center nonprofits: 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 since the network’s creation (referred to by critics as “pop-up groups” because they are little more than websites.) ^{[4] [5]} A fifth nonprofit, the North Fund, is significantly funded by Arabella’s nonprofits, is housed at the company’s address, and pays Arabella consulting fees.

In 2020, Arabella’s nonprofit network boasted total revenues exceeding $1.67 billion and total expenditures of $1.26 billion, and paid out $896 million in grants largely to other left-leaning and politically active nonprofits. ^[6] In 2019, Arabella’s four nonprofits reported combined revenues of $731 million. ^[7]

Altogether, between 2006 and 2020 Arabella’s network reported total revenues of $4.7 billion and total expenditures of $3.3 billion. ^[8] 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.” ^[9]

These funds originate primarily with major left-of-center foundations and individual donors, not with the company Arabella Advisors, and are controlled by the nonprofits, which in turn “hire” Arabella Advisors to consult in exchange for a fee. Many of Arabella’s top officials, including firm founder Eric Kessler and former managing director Bruce Boyd, are current or former principal officers on the nonprofits’ boards of directors. ^[10] Between 2008 and 2020, Arabella’s nonprofits paid the company over $182 million in contracting and management services fees. ^[11]

Arabella’s nonprofit network 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, and was highly active in funding pro-Democratic Party advertisements in the 2018 and 2020 elections. Its groups were also active in trying to manipulate the outcome of the 2020 U.S. Census in left-leaning states and the subsequent 2021-22 redistricting process, when state legislative and congressional districts were redrawn by state legislatures. ^{[12] [13] [14]} Multiple former Arabella employees have also been traced to the Biden administration. ^[15]

Arabella Advisors 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. ^[16]

Arabella and its nonprofit network have been criticized as “dark money” funders both for channeling hundreds of millions of dollars from left-leaning foundations 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. ^[17] However, Arabella’s nonprofit network also manages a number of “philanthropic projects” engaged in genuine charity, not political advocacy. ^[18]

In April 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” ^[19]

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.” ^[20] 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. ^[21] 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.” ^[22]

In 2021, The Atlantic called Arabella’s network “the massive progressive dark-money group you’ve never heard of” and Arabella Advisors the network’s “mothership,” adding: “Democrats have quietly pulled ahead of Republicans in untraceable political spending. One group helped make it happen.” In the Atlantic’s interview with Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli it called the Sixteen Thirty Fund “the indisputable heavyweight of Democratic dark money” which funneled “roughly $61 million of effectively untraceable money to progressive causes,” making it the “second-largest super-PAC donor in 2020.” ^[23]

Organizational Overview

Arabella Advisors is a strategic consulting and management company founded in 2005 that works with individual donors and large left-of-center nonprofits. ^[24]

Arabella has an estimated 150 employees across its three offices in Washington, DC, San Francisco, California, and Chicago, Illinois. ^{[25] [26]} The company 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. ^[27] Arabella claims to have carried out more than 150 domestic and international projects for clients with combined assets worth more than $100 billion. ^[28] More current estimates place the number of projects Arabella’s nonprofits have initiated at between 300 and 400; the company has not disclosed an exact figure. ^[29]

Arabella boasts of helping its clients develop and implement programs and campaigns that produce left-of-center-social and policy changes, bringing its wide-range of left-wing nonprofits together to collaborate and exchange ideas on how to implement left-of-center policies. ^[30]

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. ^[31]

In 2020, Arabella launched a podcast hosted by senior staff members featuring guests from various nonprofit and for-profit organizations centered on race and gender equity. The podcast discusses the guests’ organization and their professional work, along with the subjects of racial and sexual discrimination. ^[32]

Founding

For more information, see Eric Kessler

Eric Kessler founded Arabella Advisors in 2005. Kessler, a former Clinton administration staffer for the Interior Department and League of Conservation Voters activist, has said that he “started Arabella Advisors out of a personal experience with philanthropy”: ^[33]

I came from a very philanthropic family and recognized early on how hard it is to be good at giving money away. Through the frustrations that I faced as a young philanthropist, I decided to build a firm that provided a set of support services to some of the nation’s most significant philanthropists – families, individuals, big corporate foundations, and large institutional foundations. And we as a firm wake up every day to help philanthropists have the greatest impact possible with our resources.

From the start, Arabella was focused on “impact investing,” directing capital towards investments which will generate both returns and economic or social changes. It can also mean changing public policy. “When I started Arabella 12 years ago, the words ‘impact investing’ didn’t exist,” Kessler told an interviewer in 2017. “[T]he last decade has really seen a huge transformation in philanthropy.” ^[34]

“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 the Arabella network’s inception, it’s sponsored at least 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. ^[35]

Ownership and Holding Companies

Also see Arabella Acquisition LLC and Arabella Advisors Holdings LLC

Filings with the District of Columbia show a single beneficial owner of Arabella Advisors, LLC: Jennifer Steans, an investment manager and Democratic Party donor who owns the companies Financial Investments Corporation and its direct investment arm Concentric Equity Partners in Chicago, Illinois. ^{[36] [37] [38]} Steans herself also chairs the board of Arabella Advisors. ^[39]

Concentric Equity Partners is listed as one of the beneficial owners of Arabella Advisors Holdings, LLC, a D.C. corporation formed in June 2021 that is believed to act as a holding company to Arabella Advisors. ^{[40] [41]} Other Arabella Advisors Holdings beneficial owners include: ^[42]

• Arabella Advisors founder, senior managing director, and principal Eric Kessler;
• Arabella Advisors senior managing director and principal Bruce Boyd;
• Arabella Advisors senior advisor and former CEO Sampriti Ganguli;
• Arabella Advisors chief operating officer Chris Hobbs;
• Arabella Advisors senior managing director Gwen Walden;
• Arabella Advisors chief strategy and impact officer Hilary Cherner;
• Arabella Advisors chief financial officer Wilbur Priester;
• Bruce W. Boyd 2017 Gift Trust

However, Illinois secretary of state business filings show that Arabella Advisors is controlled by a third corporation: Arabella Acquisition, LLC, whose owners remain unknown. ^[43]

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. ^{[44] [45]}

In April 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s “system of political financing, which often obscures the identities of donors,” as “dark money,” calling the network “a leading vehicle for it on the Left.” ^[46] In May 2021, the New York Times criticized Arabella’s New Venture Fund and its 501(c)(4) “sister” nonprofit, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, for their close ties to and funding from the foreign-funded Wyss Foundation, calling Sixteen Thirty Fund one of the “leading dark money spenders on the Left” responsible for distributing more than $63 million in super PAC donations that hurt Republicans and aided Democrats in the 2020 election, as well for “help[ing] create and fund dozens of groups, including some that worked to block Mr. Trump’s nominees and push progressive appointments by Mr. Biden.” ^[47]

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.” ^[48] 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. ^[49] 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.” ^[50]

Arabella Advisors has accused the Capital Research Center (CRC), a right-leaning think tank which publishes InfluenceWatch, of promoting “a series of . . . false claims” that “turn on a variety of factual errors and deliberate mischaracterizations” regarding Arabella Advisors since 2019. ^[51] However, neither the company nor its nonprofit network have ever provided specific information regarding any factual errors or mischaracterizations publicized by CRC.

Private Funding of Elections (2020)

In 2020, the Arabella-run New Venture Fund provided close to $25 million in funding to the Center for Technology and Civic Life (CTCL), a left-of-center nonprofit that passed roughly $350 million to thousands of elections offices in the form of COVID-19 “relief funds” ahead of the 2020 election, money which originated with Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. ^[52]

New Venture Fund’s grant was CTCL’s second-largest donation in 2020. ^[53]

CTCL’s private funding of election offices was widely criticized. In January 2022, the Wall Street Journal editorial board called for the practice to banned by the states: “Zuckerbucks Shouldn’t Pay for Elections” because “it fans mistrust to let private donors fund official voting duties.” ^[54]

The Capital Research Center (which publishes InfluenceWatch) has noted in its analysis of CTCL spending that the group “consistently gave bigger grants and more money per capita to counties that voted for [Joe] Biden” in the 2020 election. In Georgia, for instance, CTCL grants averaged $1.41 per capita in counties won by President Donald Trump versus $5.33 in counties won by Biden. ^[55]

Unlawful Private Funding of Elections Lawsuit (2020)

Also see Center for Secure and Modern Elections (Nonprofit) and Center for Tech and Civic Life (Nonprofit)

On October 2, 2021, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry sued the New Venture Fund (the parent organization of the Center for Secure Modern Elections, or CSME), the Center for Technology and Civic Life (an allied organization), and the consulting firm Full Circle Strategies (which represented both organizations locally) “to prevent the injection of unregulated private money into the Louisiana election system and to protect the integrity of elections in the State by ensuring against the corrosive influence of outside money on Louisiana election officials.” According to the lawsuit, “private contributions to local election officials are unlawful and contrary to the methods for election funding established by law in the State of Louisiana”; the Attorney General sought to have CTCL’s funding declared illegal and be permanently enjoined. ^[56]

The lawsuit alleged that CTCL and New Venture Fund (under the name “Center for Secure and Modern Elections”) had unlawfully “targeted 13 parishes” for elections grants, some of which exceeded $500,000, requiring local registrar’s offices to provide “detailed information about [their] operations, conduct, and expenses” in turn. These transactions were allegedly facilitated by Dawn Maisel Cole, the principal for Full Circle Strategies, who “directly solicited registrars and clerks of court to accept contributions from CTCL and New Venture for the operation of their respective offices.” Besides breaking state law, the Attorney General’s office argued that private funding of elections is barred by the Louisiana state legislature and U.S. Congress for “obvious” reasons: ^[57]

1. The influence that would inevitably accompany private financial contributions to local elections officials;
2. Outside donations to local election officials sow distrust in the administration of the election system;
3. Private contributions would inevitably spawn competition for party and corporate control over local election funding and would lead to bidding for election favor by party and private interests;
4. Private contributors are likely to be political parties or large corporations that have partisan and/or economic objectives to foster with their contributions to election officials;
5. Private interests, as in this instance, fund particular parishes and particular aspects of the election that they believe advance their election goals and objectives;
6. Should registrars and clerks become reliant upon private funding of their governmental activities, they may well be compelled to respond to the objectives of those providing the funding in order to ensure that the funding continues;
7. Such private funding, washed through non-profit organizations, invites the potential for contributions from foreign governments to the Louisiana system and its election officials;
8. Private contributions open the door to election suits and contests based upon perceived or actual influence on the part of local election officials in the conduct of an election.

A state judge ruled against the state on October 26, 2020, on the grounds that the Attorney General’s office had “no cause of action” for the lawsuit and it was dismissed. ^[58] In March 2022, however, the Louisiana appeals court reversed the decision, allowing the Attorney General’s lawsuit to continue. ^[59] The Louisiana appeals court called the lower court’s ruling “legally incorrect” and stated that the Attorney General’s lawsuit “has stated a course of action to protect an interest of the state by preventing the funding of elections with private money.” ^{[60] [61]}

After the appeals court reinstated the Attorney General’s lawsuit, CTCL, NVF, CSME, and Full Circle Strategies again sought a dismissal of the case, requesting that the state Supreme Court review the appeals court decision. On June 28, 2022, the Louisiana Supreme Court ruled in favor of the Attorney General in a 4-3 decision, allowing the lawsuit to proceed. Speaking about the decision, Erick Kaaral, special counsel of the right-of-center Thomas More Society which has advocated extensively against CTCL funding and “zuckbucks” said, “I’m optimistic that Louisiana courts will find that the CTCL intervention is not legally authorized,” and that “… Our election system was ambushed by billionaires, and they’ve had a huge influence.” ^[62]

Hiding Political Agenda Behind “Fake News Sites”

The nonprofit watchdog OpenSecrets (published by the Center for Responsive Politics) reported in May 2020 on Arabella’s involvement in numerous “fake news sites,” pouring millions of untraceable dollars into advertisements and other digital content “masquerading as news coverage to influence the 2020 election.” ^[63]

OpenSecrets identified five Facebook pages (Colorado Chronicle, Daily CO, Nevada News Now, Silver State Sentinel, Verified Virginia) that “gave the impression of multiple free-standing local news outlets,” but are in fact “merely fictitious names used by the Sixteen Thirty Fund,” Arabella’s 501(c)(4) lobbying nonprofit. ^[64] These pages published Facebook political advertisements that favored Democrats and left-wing causes during the 2020 election. After the report was published a number of these pages were deleted.

States Newsroom, which runs another network of left-wing “fake news” websites, was originally created as “Newsroom Network,” a project of the Arabella-run 501(c)(3) Hopewell Fund. In June 2019, States Newsroom was spun off as an independent nonprofit with its own 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, but a number of its local affiliates are used by the Hopewell Fund as its own legal aliases. ^[65]

While States Newsroom does not disclose its donors (and is not required to by the IRS), ^[66]

IRS application records obtained by OpenSecrets show the States Newsroom was offered a $1 million donation from the Wyss Foundation, a private foundation primarily funded by Swiss billionaire Hansjorg Wyss, who made his fortune as CEO of a controversial medical device manufacturer called Synthes.

A financial statement in the IRS records obtained by OpenSecrets shows that the States Newsroom plans to bring in more than $27 million in contributions before the end of 2021.

And in 2018 the Hopewell Fund gave $1.72 million to News for Democracy, which OpenSecrets points out “was at the crux of a network of seemingly independent Facebook pages disguised as news outlets that started spending on digital ads in 2018,” with backing from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and Investing in US, an investment vehicle funded by LinkedIn founder and liberal billionaire Reid Hoffman. ^[67]

Also among these “dark money” groups was ACRONYM, which raised $9.4 million from “secret donors” through April 2019, including $250,000 from Arabella’s 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund. ACRONYM is affiliated with a super PAC, PACRONYM, which spent close to $18 million aiding Democrats and hurting Republicans through independent expenditures in the 2020 election. ^[68] ACRONYM also owns and operates Courier Newsroom, which in turn manages a network of left-wing websites that present themselves as local news outlets while spreading “hyperlocal partisan propaganda,” according to the centrist watchdog Newsguard. ^[69] Courier Newsroom spent at least $20,000 in digital advertising campaigns on Facebook between March 2019 and May 2020; its total spending in Facebook ads as of June 2021 is nearly $1.4 million. ^{[70] [71]}

The Atlantic: Arabella’s Political Activism Masked as Philanthropy

Arabella’s increasing prominence as the head of a large and influential network of political groups has earned the company attention from both left- and right-leaning media, which respectively praise or criticize Arabella’s political activism as it exists in the guise of “philanthropy.”

InsidePhilanthropy, a left-leaning website that examines trends in charitable giving, praised Arabella Advisors founder Eric Kessler in July 2021 as one of the 100 “most powerful players in philanthropy” for aiding “progressive causes” through his nonprofit network: ^[72]

Since he founded Arabella Advisors in 2005, Kessler has built a complex network of nonprofit funds and pass-through entities that now channel hundreds of millions toward progressive causes annually—giving that soared under Trump.

Arabella Advisors maintains that its nonprofit network primarily serves philanthropic, not political, causes. A November 2021 interview with the Atlantic observed that “Arabella hates [the] narrative” that it controls a set of “innocuous-sounding . . . and promiscuously spawn[ed] mini-organizations” engaged in political causes. In its interview with Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli, the Atlantic wrote: ^[73]

The organization’s CEO, Sampriti Ganguli, insisted to me that she runs a relatively small business-services organization that does HR, legal compliance, accounting, etc., for clients such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Ganguli comes from a consultant background, and she talks like it: Arabella’s mission is to make philanthropy more efficient, effective, and equitable, she told me.

Of Arabella’s political spending, the Atlantic wrote: ^[74]

Do you feel good that you’re the Left’s equivalent of the Koch brothers?

Ganguli: Yeah.

. . .

[Interviewer]: Okay. You guys have a narrative around you, which associates you with dark-money spending in America. I want to give you a clean opportunity to explain why you think that narrative is wrong.

Ganguli: I’m super surprised at the attention that Arabella Advisors gets. We’re a pretty small professional-services business. We make sure things get done on time, that the checks go where they need to go. We help donors figure out how to maximize their effectiveness. I struggle to fully diagnose the narrative.

What I will say is, on the work of the Sixteen Thirty Fund in particular, the narrative is often spun by a set of actors and agents who benefit equally, if not more, from the same legal structure. One of the reasons we don’t engage in this narrative is that it’s not at all the bulk of what Arabella Advisors does. Whenever organizations are looking to profile the work of philanthropy, we’re super excited to talk about that. But it has been my observation that the slog of day-to-day change doesn’t warrant headlines in a 24/7 media cycle.

[Interviewer]: Look, I take your point. But just to give you insight into the reporter brain: In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund was the second-largest giver to super PACs in the entire country. The first was One Nation, a right-wing organization. The Sixteen Thirty Fund gave $61 million to super PACs. They’ve scaled up at a speed that is unprecedented. Your organization’s structure has even prompted people on the [R]ight to say, “Hey, I love what you’re doing. I’m going to reorganize in order to mirror you.”

I don’t think it’s that reporters don’t have a taste for covering long, slow, hard work. This political spending is newsworthy. And Arabella shares an address, resources, legal services, HR services, and all kinds of other things with the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Ganguli: I don’t dispute your wanting to ask the question. I just worry that you’re asking the question to the wrong person.

The Atlantic attributed Arabella’s vast political influence to “the rush of panicked political giving on the Left during the Trump years” but added that “Arabella, as a mission-driven, progressive organization, is caught in a major tension on the [L]eft: How can progressive groups justify using billionaires’ money to influence American politics and civic life while earnestly advocating for a wealth tax or political-spending reforms?” ^[75]

Judicial Crisis Network Advertisement

In February 2022, right-of-center advocacy group Judicial Crisis Network (JCN) ran an advertisement claiming that Arabella Advisors was using “dark money” for left-wing political causes and to influence President Biden’s pick for Supreme Court nominee. ^{[76] [77] [78]} Airing within the Washington D.C area, the ad claimed, “The President and the Senate were bankrolled by Arabella Advisors. A record amount of dark money, over a billion dollars, put them in office so they’ll put up an Arabella judge, a liberal activist, a Biden rubber stamp. A Huge Sum. A Huge Payback.” ^{[79] [80] [81]}

On February 3, legal counsel for Arabella Advisors sent a letter to D.C. cable TV stations which had aired JCN’s advertisement, requesting they cease all broadcasts of the advertisement due to “demonstrably false” statements. ^[82] According to Arabella’s consul, “Arabella Advisors does not make donations or contributions in connection with elections. It is simply false that it “bankrolled any electoral efforts.”” ^[83] The letter continued, “Arabella Advisors never engaged in a quid pro quo of providing contributions in exchange for a Supreme Court nomination.” ^[84] The consul representing Arabella were part of the Elias Law Group, a law firm founded by left-wing attorney Marc Elias. ^{[85] [86]}

On February 4, legal counsel representing JCN contacted the same DC broadcast stations stating that the letters sent by Arabella’s counsel were “a meritless attempt to shield your viewers from the dangerous levels of influence exerted by the Arabella network over critical decisions being made by the Biden Administration including the impending choice of a Supreme Court nominee.” ^[87] In addition, the original ad by JCN had been revised and rereleased with part of the wording changed to say, “Biden and the Senate were bankrolled by Arabella Advisors Network.” ^{[88] [89]}

The letter makes note of this change by stating, “For the avoidance of any doubt, JCN made clear in the text on screen and in voiceover that the Advertisement addresses the activities of what the New York Times refers to as the “network” of ‘Arabella-managed groups.’ Of course, Arabella Advisors provides the infrastructure for this Network and without Arabella the Network does not function. JCN included the ‘network’ reference on screen and in voiceover to further emphasize the network effect and scope of the Arabella operation.” ^[90]

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. ^[91] 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. ^{[92] [93]}

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. ^[94] The New Venture Fund claims it has sponsored over 280 projects across a range of left-of-center issues. ^[95] In 2020, NVF reported $975 million in revenues. ^[96]

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. ^{[97] [98] [99]} In 2020, the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $389 million in revenues. ^[100]

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. ^[101] In 2020, the Hopewell Fund reported revenues of $152 million. ^[102]

The Windward Fund is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit formed in 2015 that primarily sponsors environmentalist groups. ^[103] In 2020, the Windward Fund reported revenues of $159 million. ^[104]

Company’s Relationship to Nonprofit Network

Arabella Advisors’ nonprofit network is not directly funded by Arabella Advisors LLC, but rather by separate donors, most of them left-leaning foundations. The company and nonprofits are legally distinct entities. The company also maintains that it “is not the source of funding for any of these organizations, and we do not exert control over the spending decisions of our clients.” However, the Washington Post all four Arabella nonprofits were founded by and until recently were directly run by senior Arabella Advisors staff, including founder Eric Kessler. ^[105]

Network Financial Overview

Arabella Advisors’ four “Funds” have grown rapidly since their inception, reporting total revenues of $4.7 billion and expenditures of $3.4 billion between 2006 and 2020. ^[106] A summary is available below:

Total Revenues:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Revenues
	New Venture Fund	Sixteen Thirty Fund	Hopewell Fund	Windward Fund	North Fund		Annual Total
2020	$975,483,022	$389,684,866	$152,371,332	$158,611,799	$66,608,974		$1,742,759,993
2019	$460,798,902	$138,371,684	$86,964,726	$44,404,708	$9,351,304		$739,891,324
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
2012	$52,519,099	$812,500	-	-	-		$53,331,599
2011	$36,542,348	$93,600	-	-	-		$36,635,948
2010	$16,813,261	-	-	-	-		$16,813,261
2009	$26,812,567	$4,828,000	-	-	-		$31,640,567
2008	$6,011,782	-	-	-	-		$6,011,782
2007	$1,663,363	-	-	-	-		$1,663,363
2006	$545,100	-	-	-	-		$545,100
Sum:	$3,309,682,985	$805,857,864	$373,327,366	$252,020,411	$75,960,278
					Grand Total:		$4,903,813,630

Total Expenditures:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Expenditures
	New Venture Fund	Sixteen Thirty Fund	Hopewell Fund	Windward Fund	North Fund		Annual Total
2020	$658,874,215	$410,038,247	$127,636,237	$70,257,223	$48,780,510		$1,315,586,432
2019	$420,857,504	$98,641,867	$107,689,308	$20,844,825	$1,862,416		$649,895,920
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
2012	$39,574,786	$353,098	-	-	-		$39,927,884
2011	$24,722,363	$93,600	-	-	-		$24,815,963
2010	$14,893,390	$447,394	-	-	-		$15,340,784
2009	$13,847,145	$4,380,606	-	-	-		$18,227,751
2008	$3,983,417	-	-	-	-		$3,983,417
2007	$1,315,615	-	-	-	-		$1,315,615
2006	$40,399	-	-	-	-		$40,399
Sum:	$2,569,269,290	$744,168,180	$322,125,544	$123,216,456	$50,642,926
					Grand Total:		$3,838,336,553

Grants Paid:

Arabella Advisors Nonprofit Network: Grants Paid
	New Venture Fund	Sixteen Thirty Fund	Hopewell Fund	Windward Fund	North Fund		Annual Total
2020	$447,092,573	$324,931,044	$80,113,710	$44,017,016	$34,186,410		$930,340,753
2019	$242,710,382	$64,973,649	$78,913,765	$8,115,107	$1,002,000		$395,714,903
2018	$205,351,216	$91,386,301	$60,039,868	$3,955,493	-		$360,732,878
2017	$154,740,778	$13,336,144	$21,562,711	$2,476,502	-		$192,116,135
2016	$114,285,885	$14,584,591	$5,662,344	$2,339,698	-		$136,872,518
2015	$87,322,893	$6,768,578	-	-	-		$94,091,471
2014	$56,602,126	$9,719,545	-	-	-		$66,321,671
2013	$29,520,729	$1,322,500	-	-	-		$30,843,229
2012	$17,076,406	$152,500	-	-	-		$17,228,906
2011	$9,217,867	-	-	-	-		$9,217,867
2010	$4,105,145	$146,569	-	-	-		$4,251,714
2009	$3,206,141	$3,336,624	-	-	-		$6,542,765
2008	$2,172,460	-	-	-	-		$2,172,460
2007	$10,000	-	-	-	-		$10,000
2006	-	-	-	-	-		-
Sum:	$1,373,414,601	$530,658,045	$246,292,398	$60,903,816	$35,188,410
					Grand Total:		$2,246,457,270

Arabella Advisors’ Consulting and Management Fees:

Between 2008 and 2020, Arabella’s four nonprofits paid the company at least a combined $182 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): ^[107]

Arabella Network: Contracting Fees
	New Venture Fund	Sixteen Thirty Fund	Hopewell Fund	Windward Fund	North Fund	Annual Total	% Growth
2020	$26,982,304	$9,066,157	$6,657,691	$2,918,654	$2,296,936	$47,921,742	42.02%
2019	$23,261,222	$3,462,967	$4,858,669	$2,159,679	-	$33,742,537	24.03%
2018	$18,920,327	$3,483,127	$3,763,563	$1,037,742	-	$27,204,759	22.40%
2017	$17,678,314	$2,066,194	$1,507,771	$980,466	-	$22,232,745	43.40%
2016	$13,167,207	$789,891	$807,425	$740,180	-	$15,504,703	14.20%
2015	$13,167,207	$239,739	$170,953	-	-	$13,577,899	57.10%
2014	$8,299,366	$342,066	-	-	-	$8,641,432	49.70%
2013	$5,509,532	$201,906	-	-	-	$5,771,438	35.90%
2012	$4,246,022	-	-	-	-	$4,246,022	69.50%
2011	$2,505,465	-	-	-	-	$2,505,465	101%
2010	$1,246,232	-	-	-	-	$1,246,232	-17.3
2009	$1,345,054	$162,604	-	-	-	$1,507,658	171%
2008	$555,931	-	-	-	-	$555,931	-
Total:	$136,884,183	$19,814,651	$17,766,072	$7,836,721	$2,296,936
					Grand Total:	$184,658,563

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. ^[108] 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. ^[109] [110]

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). ^[111]

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. ^[112] 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. ^[113]

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). ^[114] 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. ^[115]

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.” ^[116]

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.

Funding

Direct Funding from Foundations

Between 2012 and 2018, Arabella Advisors itself (as opposed to the nonprofit network it administers) received roughly $6.1 million in grants from private foundations and other nonprofits (not counting its own network). While it is legal for nonprofits to give grants consistent with IRS charitable rules to for-profit corporations, it is unusual.

Major contributors to Arabella Advisors LLC include the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation ($1.9 million), heavily funded by billionaire investor Warren Buffett, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation ($487,000). ^{[117] [118] [119]}

Issue Areas

Arabella’s main issue areas focus on left-of-center environmentalist, gender, and food policies. ^[120]

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. ^[121] 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.” ^[122]

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. ^[123]

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. ^[124]

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. ^[125]

Evidence of Partisanship

Claims of Nonpartisanship

In October 2020, Steve Sampson, head of marketing and communications for Arabella Advisors, sent a letter to the Wall Street Journal claiming that his company does “not pursue a particular ideology.” Sampson wrote: ^[126]

Your editorial “Sheldon Whitehouse Does Glenn Beck” (Oct. 14) includes an inaccurate representation of Arabella Advisors that should be clarified. The editorial says: “Arabella funds a variety of left-wing political groups that in turn fund Democrats.” Arabella Advisors is neither a donor to political groups nor a partisan organization. We are a consulting business that supports effective philanthropy and impact investing. We do this by providing strategy advice and operational support to hundreds of clients whose interests range from finding cures to diseases to supporting organizations rooted in their religious faith to addressing injustices through public education and policy change. We work in response to client demand; we do not determine how our clients use their resources. We also do not pursue a particular ideology. We help our clients achieve philanthropic effectiveness, and we begin with the assumption that solutions to the challenges our society faces can come from concerned people with very different ideological and political viewpoints.

Secret “Clean Energy” Campaign Correspondence

However, private email correspondence from 2017 obtained by the watchdog group Climate Litigation Watch reveals partisan activist campaigns organized by Arabella Advisors and the largest nonprofit in its network, New Venture Fund. In it, Arabella Advisors and New Venture Fund are described as “partners” working in close proximity on coalition-building, mobilizing “resources,” “advocacy expertise,” and advancing “clean energy” legislation. ^[127]

In June 2017, New Venture Fund president Lee Bodner (a former Arabella Advisors senior managing director) corresponded with Chris Davis, then senior policy advisor for climate and energy affairs for Washington Gov. Jay Inslee (D) and a former staffer for the left-leaning Nature Conservancy, wherein Bodner bragged about New Venture Fund’s activism: ^{[128] [129]}

Relevant background on New Venture Fund:

• We’re a $350 million/year 501c3 that serves as a platform to 200+ projects. About 30% of our work is on the environment.
• We help donors, individuals and governments quickly mobilize resources to get projects up and running quickly (we can hire staff, and have deep advocacy expertise, for example) and we facilitate multi-stakeholder coalitions.

On climate, along with our partners at Arabella Advisors:

• We’re currently the fiscal sponsor of the We Mean Business coalition[:] a $40 million effort to bring business leaders into the conversation around climate policy. We Mean Business is one of the organizers of [We Are Still In].
• We’re also the fiscal sponsor of Mission 2020, which is Christiana Figueresa’s post-Paris [Climate Accord] project.
• WE manage the philanthropy for a Midwest funder that supported efforts to ensure vulnerable populations had strong representation in both country-level planning and the negotiations in Paris. Since then, we’ve supported implementation of the Paris targets by funding work to develop 100 percent clean energy plans in nearly 50 countries most vulnerable to climate change.
• We have been the lead consultant on the divest-invest campaign, a global effort to encourage individuals and foundations to divest from fossil fuel stocks and invest in clean energy alternatives.

Bodner suggested directing “donors (on the NVF side and clients (on the Arabella side) who we expect to be interested in” Inslee’s work regarding the U.S. Climate Alliance, a coalition of governors advocating for anti-oil and gas energy policies to reduce carbon dioxide emissions: ^[130]

I’m attaching a memo which outlines ways that the New Venture Fund and Arabella Advisors might support you and the other governors’ offices with the US Climate Alliance . . .

That memorandum (signed by Lee Bodner and Arabella principal Bruce Boyd) noted that “New Venture Fund and its consulting partner Arabella Advisors are uniquely positioned to help you quickly secure and deploy resources for the Alliances while making connections to influential climate leaders . . . working to honor the Paris Agreement.” ^[131]

“Arabella’s climate team also has the expertise and networks . . . necessary to build strong connections with private sector and civil society leaders”: ^[132]

For example, Arabella is working with several climate funders across the United States to advance ambitious clean energy policies at the state and municipal level. We currently manage grants to 100 percent clean energy campaigns in key states such as New York, California, Florida, and Washington. We also supported a post-Paris [Climate Accord] convening of global climate leaders in partnership with Climate Action Network International to craft country-level plans to meet the goals established in the agreement. We can tap into these relationships and initiatives to help the governors promote and grow the Initiative and advance ambitious new commitments to curb emissions.

The memo also provided a list of past projects Arabella and New Venture Fund had operated related to climate policy: ^[133]

Leadership

Founder

Also see Eric Kessler

Eric Kessler is the founder, principal, and senior managing director of Arabella Advisors. He has been a board member or chair of Arabella’s four nonprofits at various times; in June 2021 he resigned as chair 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. ^[134]

Eric Kessler was born in 1972. Kessler’s family operated Fel-Pro, a Chicago-based automobile parts manufacturer with a “family-centric management style and progressive outlook on business ownership” which his family sold in 1998 for an estimated $750 million. ^[135]  The company was reportedly in the Kessler family for 80 years and was ranked by Forbes one of the 100 best companies to work in America. ^[136]

Shortly thereafter he became involved in the family’s philanthropy, the Family Alliance Foundation, based in Chicago. ^[137] In 2019, the foundation reported revenues of $209,794 and expenditures of $464,817, of which $382,881 was paid out as grants to organizations largely focused on food security and medical research. ^[138] Eric Kessler is a member of the foundation’s board of directors (as of 2019), alongside Barbara W. Kessler and Dennis L. Kessler, his parents. Dennis “Denny” Kessler is president and founder of Midwest Family Business Advisors, which advises family business owners on conflict resolution, strategic planning, and related small business services. ^[139]

Kessler is reportedly related to former Montana state Sen. Dan Weinberg (D-Whitefish), who served in the legislature from 2004 to 2008. ^[140]

In the 1990s, Kessler joined the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs, a nonprofit that advances a left-leaning vision of democracy in developing countries. As of 2020, he is also a board member for the institute. ^[141] He later joined the League of Conservation Voters, a left-wing environmental advocacy and get-out-the-vote group, as national field director. During the Clinton administration, Kessler worked under Department of the Interior Secretary Bruce Babbitt (D). He founded Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm for foundations and left-leaning donors, in 2005. ^[142]

Chief Executive Officer and Co-Principals

Sampriti Ganguli is the chief executive officer of Arabella Advisors. ^[143]

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. ^[144] 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. ^[145] 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. ^[146]