The Partnership Funds

The Partnership Funds is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a left-of-center nonprofit incubator formerly controlled by Arabella Advisors until 2025. The Partnership Funds is based in Washington, D.C. ^{3 1 4} The Partnership Funds has a sister organization, the Partnership Action Fund, which acts as an advocacy counterpart group, as it is managed by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund. ³

Background

The Partnership Funds was founded in 2014 and was billed as a left-of-center funding collective focused on political issues on “multi-racial and multi-class bases” at the state level. It primarily works by disbursing grants to smaller organizations concerned with maintaining political power through election cycles and leadership transitions. It claims that its main recipients are “racial justice organizations” that are “membership-based, anti-racist in their approach, collaborative,” and dedicated to “exercising government power.” It has highlighted “Black, Latinx, Indigenous, undocumented and gender non conforming” leaders as people who deserve additional support and who are allegedly the key to positive social change. ^{3 1}

As of 2026, it identified Virginia, Minnesota, New Mexico, Michigan, Ohio, and “more recently” Florida as its core geographic focuses. ³

The Partnership Funds is a fiscally sponsored project of the New Venture Fund, a left-of-center nonprofit incubator formerly controlled by Arabella Advisors until 2025. The Partnership Funds is based in Washington, D.C. ^{3 1 4}

The Partnership Funds also goes by the name, “the Partnership Fund,” according to both the group itself and its grantors. ^{3 2}

Leadership

The founding executive director of the Partnership Funds was Steven Cole-Schwartz, a veteran of left-wing funding and organizing. Cole-Schwartz had previously worked for the Ballot Initiative Strategy Center and the Tides Foundation. ^{5  6}

Cole-Schwartz left his post at the Partnership Funds in 2019 and relocated from Washington, D.C. to Seattle to found his own firm. For a time, Cole-Schwartz then co-chaired the Funders Committee for Civic Participation, a partner of the Partnership Funds. As of 2026, he was the vice president of grantmaking at the Inatai Foundation.  ^{5 6}

According to the New Venture Fund, the executive director of the Partnership Funds in 2022 was Erin Dale McCllelan. McClellan was quoted as saying, “We need people to face the things that are preventing us from being effective. And that’s internalized racism, white supremacy, colonized mind, colonized practices—that do not honor us as human beings and our dignity.” ¹

Affiliations

Funders Committee for Civic Participation

As of 2020, the Partnership Funds was a member of the Funders Committee for Civic Participation (FCCP), an affinity group organized for left-leaning mega donors. At that time, the FCCP was a project of NEO Philanthropy and operated as a network of roughly 90 left-leaning funding organizations. ⁷

Southern Partners Fund

In 2020, the Partnership Funds collaborated with the Southern Partners Fund to “right historic wrongs” in the U.S. South, referring to its role as the “historic heart of the slave economy.” Partnership Funds claimed that “again and again white liberals have proved unwilling to deal with the question of race necessary to true political and progressive power building in the region.” As such, its collaboration with the Southern Partners Fund intended to “build true black political power in the south.” ³

Advocacy Arm

The Partnership Funds has a sister organization, the Partnership Action Fund, which acts as an advocacy counterpart group, as it is managed by the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund. ³

The Partnership Action Fund funds left-wing political activity by many of the nation’s most notable left-leaning environmentalist organizations, including the League of Conservation Voters, the Natural Resources Defense Council, and the National Wildlife Federation, among others. ⁸

Grantmaking

According to the New Venture Fund, the Partnership Funds retains a controlling stake in what its grant recipients do with the funds it has given them. Calling it “participatory grantmaking,” New Venture Fund justified the practice by referring to it as a way to “practice equity” and a form of “independent power-building.” ¹

In 2020, the Partnership Funds began funding “Black-led organizations” in the U.S. South to help them pursue “community organizing, policy advocacy, and direct action.” As of 2022, the group claimed it was continuing to finance organizations in Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee “to build long-term, independent political power.” ¹

Funding

The Partnership Funds has received financial support from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. ^{2 9}