Democratic dark money fuels ‘nonpartisan’ climate group behind swing state ads

In its own telling, Science Moms is a “nonpartisan group of scientists” working to fight climate change. Science Moms is spending $2.5 million on a new advertising campaign about “unnatural disasters” in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and other swing states until Sept. 30 in the lead-up to the November elections.

“If you knew this was your last, best chance to protect all the places you love, what would you do?” says a narrator in the ad, which is called “Climate change is taking the places we love.”

But while Science Moms appears to position itself as apolitical and grassroots, it actually shares a connection to Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm that doubles as the largest Democratic-aligned dark money network in the United States. Science Moms is not a stand-alone entity. Rather, it’s an initiative of the Potential Energy Coalition, a former project of an Arabella-managed dark money group called the Windward Fund, tax records show. The Windward Fund, which finances the Potential Energy Coalition, is bankrolled by the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, and other billionaires.

The relationship between the Windward Fund in Washington, D.C., and Science Moms illustrates how complex tax laws serve to obscure where nonprofit organizations often derive their assets. Arabella has long argued that it merely provides administrative, human resources, and accounting services to independently run groups, though its billion-dollar network is, in many ways, unique due to its scope and sprawling usage of fiscal sponsorship. This legal arrangement allows Arabella-linked projects to shield their backers from the IRS, which does not require sponsored projects to submit separate financial disclosures.

Arabella-managed entities, including the Windward Fund, were recently accused by the Right of illegally enriching the consultancy’s founder, Eric Kessler. The Washington, D.C., attorney general’s office closed an investigation into Arabella this year — to the ire of conservatives who say its network violated federal rules in appearing to, in some cases, exert control over other groups.

The Potential Energy Coalition spun off from the Windward Fund in October 2020, according to documents on file with the IRS.

In 2022, the Windward Fund granted over $13 million to the PEC, which received a $4.5 million grant from the left-wing dark money group in the preceding tax year. But earmarked grants aren’t the only connection between the Windward Fund and the PEC, which is based in New York City and calls itself “an innovative, fast-growing startup that brings the very best marketing talent in the world to bear on the climate challenge.”

The Windward Fund has disclosed on its tax forms that it paid $950,000 to the PEC in 2021 as an “independent contractor,” and a million dollars in 2020 under this same category. And the PEC, on its own financial disclosures, said in 2020 that its board chairman and secretary were “employed by the Windward Fund,” adding, “their salaries are paid by and reported” by the Windward Fund on its separate tax forms.

The Windward Fund declined to respond to sets of questions about these grants and payments, insisting it does not have an active relationship with the PEC or its Science Moms project. The Capital Research Center found in an April report that some of the largest donors to the Windward Fund from 2019 to 2022 were the William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, which funds abortion-rights causes, the Tides Foundation, and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

Soros’s Foundation to Promote Open Society gave a million dollars to the Windward Fund in 2022 for its Amplify Rural Voices project. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave $6 million to the Windward Fund in 2023 for “public awareness and analysis” as well as “agricultural development,” grant records show. Another grantee, the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, steered $7 million in 2022 and 2023 to Windward Fund projects.

“Windward Fund is a fiscal sponsor to a number of organizations, not a funder, which means we provide administrative support including payroll and HR to new nonprofit projects, many of which later become fully independent organizations,” a spokesperson for the Windward Fund told the Washington Examiner.

To Hayden Ludwig, a researcher often credited with unearthing key information about Arabella Advisors and its offshoots, the consultancy is adept at “keeping the public in the dark” about its influence.

“People need to understand this kind of ugly deception campaign is the norm on the professional Left,” said Ludwig, research director for Restoration of America, a conservative advocacy group. “This is how the Swamp works.”

Alec Sears, a Republican political strategist who works in the digital ad space, agreed.

“Any group with ties to Arabella Advisors is no grassroots organization,” Sears said. “Dark money ad buys in swing states are a strategy designed purely to drive the political agenda of the billionaires behind Arabella and its funds.”