NextGen Education Fund

NextGen Education Fund is 501(c)(3) group founded in 2021 that focuses on the promotion of education and civic engagement amongst young Americans through voter registration and their “NextGen Leaders Lab.” ¹. As of 2024, NextGen Education Fund also claims to focus on advocacy for economic justice, racial justice, democracy, and human dignity in addition to climate change. ²

NextGen founder Tom Steyer is a left-of-center billionaire environmental activist who focuses on supporting government action to combat global warming and helping elect Democrats. ³ NextGen Education Fund was fiscally sponsored by its sister organization, NextGen Policy, until 2022. In 2022, NextGen Education Fund received tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). ⁴

NextGen Climate Action is the lobbying and electoral advocacy arm of NextGen Education Fund. NextGen Climate Action Committee is the Steyer Network super PAC. ⁵

Background

NextGen Education Fund is focused on five major issues from a left-of-center perspective: economic justice, climate, racial justice, democracy, and human dignity. NextGen claims the “climate disaster is already at our doorstep” and advocates 100 percent weather-dependent energy, claims America has a “legacy of systemic racism and oppression,” supports access to abortion, and affirms that there is “rampant voter suppression” against people of color. ²

NextGen Education Fund has also called for forgiving student loan debt and ⁶ increased access to birth control measures. ⁷ The group also claims that conflicts involving the United States since 9/11 have caused “unprecedented climate consequences.” ⁸ The group also supports a $15 minimum wage, ⁹ and has previously claimed that police are the number one killers of African American men in the U.S. ¹⁰

Electoral Activism

2016 Election

During the 2016 election, NextGen Education Fund collaborated with SEIU International and Planned Parenthood Votes to turn out Democratic voters in the battleground state of New Hampshire.On a conference call, Tom Steyer said the goal was to defeat Donald Trump and then-U.S. Senator Kelly Ayotte (R-N.H.). The $2,000,000 get out the vote effort focused on liberal issues such as increasing the minimum wage to $15, promoting labor unions, combatting global warming, and promoting abortion. ¹¹

NextGen partnered with left-of-center Hollywood actors to produce ads urging millennials to vote for candidates promising to fight global warming as part of the #WhyWeVote campaign. One ad featured actress Natalie Portman, a longtime Democrat that campaigned for John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton during their presidential campaigns. ¹²

NextGen spent hundreds of thousands on promoting the ad. Another ad featured Aziz Ansari attacking then-presidential candidate Donald Trump because “he hates brown people” and for not believing in global warming. ¹³

Julia Louis-Dreyfus also worked with NextGen and made a video in which she endorsed Hillary Clinton for president and Democratic U.S. Senate candidates Katie McGinty (D-PA), Catherine Cortez Masto (D-NV), Maggie Hassan (D-NH), and Deborah Ross (D-NC). ¹⁴

2018 Election

During the 2018 midterm elections, NextGen Education Fund founded Black Lives Rising which spent over $1,000,000 to turn out young Black Democratic voters. Black Lives Rising partnered with left-of-center groups Color Of Change PAC, PushBlack, and the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees. The program focused on turning out Democratic voters in competitive races in North Carolina, Virginia, Pennsylvania, Florida, Michigan, and Wisconsin. ¹⁵

NextGen spent $5.2 million to elect Democrats during the 2018 election in Florida. The organization was an early backer of Andrew Gillum during the Democratic gubernatorial primary. NextGen claims to have made over 75,000 phone calls and sent 300,000 texts on behalf of Gillum in the closely contested primary. ¹⁶

NextGen attacked then-U.S. Reps. Mimi Walters (R-CA) and Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) for supporting offshore drilling. NextGen took out a half-page ad in the Orange County Register, bought billboards on a busy freeway in the area, and organized a protest against then-Reps. Walters and Rohrabacher. ¹⁷

NextGen opposed John Morganelli in the Democratic primary for Pennsylvania’s 7^th Congressional District. Morganelli was a pro-life Democrat and had taken some right-of-center stances on illegal immigration. These stances motivated NextGen to spend about $100,000 to defeat Morganelli. ¹⁸

2024 Election

During the 2024 election, NextGen Education Fund endorsed Democratic candidates for U.S. Senate in Texas and Arizona as well as other Democratic candidates in swing states like North Carolina and Pennsylvania. ¹⁹

On April 20, 2024, also known as “4/20,” a satirical holiday promoting the use of marijuana, NextGen launched an ad campaign promoting marijuana legalization focused on minority men. ²⁰

NextGen also partnered with Fuse Media in a voter registration drive aimed at adults aged 18-30 called “Just F*cking Vote.” ²¹ Additionally, NextGen partnered with the NAACP to host multiple get-out-the-vote events focused on Black men in the swing states of Nevada, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania. Other organizations that coordinated with the NAACP in this effort included BET, Communication Workers of America, and SEIU. ²²

In January 2024, NextGen launched Ignitethefuture.org, also known as Ignite Our Future. Ignite Our Future promoted Joe Biden administration’s Inflation Reduction Act as a tool to fight climate change. The initiative’s website promotes the American Climate Corp created by the Inflation Reduction Act and hosts a database of environmentalist jobs. ^{23 24}

Policy Advocacy

Environmentalist Policies

NextGen Education Fund opposed the Keystone XL pipeline and funded $1 million in TV ads against the pipeline shortly after the organization’s founding. ²⁵ In 2015, Tom Steyer criticized senators for voting to build the pipeline even as nine Democrats voted in favor of it. ^{26 27} When the Obama administration rejected the pipeline later in 2015, NextGen released a digital ad celebrating the pipeline’s defeat and called for a focus on weather-dependent energy. ²⁸

NextGen has advocated for divesting from coal ²⁹ as well as for a transition to an economy 100 percent reliant on weather-dependent energies. ²

Illegal Immigration

In 2018, NextGen Education Fund provided $1 million to the Immigrant Legal Services Center to provide suspected illegal immigrants with legal representation in their bids to stay in the United States. ³⁰ NextGen has supported a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants. ³¹

Leadership

Victoria Yang Souza is, as of June 2025, the interim executive director of NextGen America, as well as NextGen Education Fund. Yang Souza has previously served as the executive director of finance for the Democratic National Committee, the director of development at RefugePoint, and as private sector engagement for the Obama Foundation. ^{32 33 34}

The COO and general counsel of NextGen is Keith Yetter. Yetter was previously an associate at Fox Rothschild and was a legal research intern for then-California Attorney General Kamala Harris (D). ³⁵