Patagonia supports the dark money group linked to pro-Hamas demonstrations

Patagonia’s private foundation, which is under fire due to a Washington Examiner report on its funding of a Palestinian terrorism-linked group, directed millions of dollars to a left-wing dark money network behind pro-Hamas activism across the United States.

Over the last decade, Patagonia’s foundation in California has sent more than $17 million combined to the Tides Foundation and the Tides Center, a pair of affiliated nonprofit groups bankrolled by Democratic megadonors such as Bill Gates and George Soros. These two entities, which are part of a sprawling Tides network that utilizes an opaque funding structure to fuel progressive causes, help keep the lights on for Hamas-sympathetic organizations calling for the dismantling of Israel.

The $17 million in funding, traced by the Washington Examiner through tax forms filed with the IRS since 2012, illustrates how Patagonia has a major footing in progressive circles embracing staunch anti-Israel activism after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel. That largesse was delivered in the form of grants, minus $52,614 that Patagonia paid the Tides Foundation between May 2021 and April 2022 earmarked for “consulting services.”

Patagonia, which has grown increasingly partisan following an unusual corporate restructuring in 2022, claimed earlier this month that it was launching an internal review over the money that Patagonia’s tax-exempt arm gave to Alliance for Global Justice — a fact first reported by the Washington Examiner. Based in Arizona, AFGJ shares connections to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a U.S.-designated terrorist group, a relationship that prompted donors and payment processors to cut ties with the registered charity. Patagonia, however, has declined to share details or a timeline for its touted internal review.

The Tides Foundation and Tides Center, which share an office in San Francisco and combined disclosed over $1 billion in assets on 2022 tax forms, are key cogs in a network of Tides groups that have propped up more than 1,400 fiscally sponsored projects since 1976. Fiscal sponsorship is an arrangement in which a charity, under IRS rules, may house initiatives sharing its tax-exempt status that also receive services such as donation processing and legal oversight. This means charities and their projects are technically one and the same — indistinct legal entities under federal law. And fiscal sponsorship, as some watchdog groups argue, paves the way for a “dark money” pass-through system that obscures the original source of donations to and from groups, since projects do not have to file their own financial disclosures with the IRS.

In 1996, the Tides Foundation, which was founded by left-wing philanthropist Drummond Pike, incubated the Tides Center to handle fiscal sponsorship services. The two Tides groups regularly shuffle millions of dollars back and forth between each other. And they haven’t been without legal controversy, either: the national Black Lives Matter group, which was previously housed under the Tides Center, is suing the Tides Foundation for allegedly mismanaging $33 million of its cash, according to a complaint filed in May in California Superior Court, Los Angeles County.

Now, Tides-linked offshoots are front-and-center after the Hamas-led Oct. 7 attack on Israel, which left roughly 1,200 people dead in the Jewish state. Patagonia’s grants to the Tides Center and the Tides Foundation were earmarked for “environmental projects,” but it’s unclear which. Spokespeople for Patagonia and Tides did not reply to requests for comment from the Washington Examiner.

Those Tides offshoots range from Palestine Legal, which aims to shield antisemitic college campus groups from legal issues, to Adalah Justice Project, which circulated a document after Oct. 7 for signatories to “stand with the Palestinian people’s right to defend themselves,” to the Arab Resource and Organizing Center — a coalition that blocks ports, reportedly to restrict U.S. weapons from going to Israel. The Arab Resource and Organizing Center coordinates on anti-Israel activism with the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Solidarity Network, an Israeli-designated terrorist group fiscally sponsored by Alliance for Global Justice.

The Tides Center serves as the sponsor for these three projects, which, like other initiatives housed under the charity, rake in donations that are difficult — if not impossible — to trace fully through financial disclosures. Tax forms reported by the Washington Free Beacon show the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a group run by the Rockefeller family, has funneled $710,000 in earmarked grants to the Tides Center for the Adalah Justice Project since 2018.

But organizations such as the Rockefeller Brothers Fund are under no obligation to publish these details, meaning philanthropies may merely report the donations as going to the fiscal sponsor: the Tides Center.

“It’s hard to overstate the importance of fiscal sponsorship for the antisemitic and pro-terrorist movement in the United States to be able to covertly fundraise,” said Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst at Capital Research Center. A separate think tank called Zachor Legal Institute notably sent Congress a memo last year detailing how Palestinian terrorist factions “exploit” fiscal sponsorship arrangements, allegedly to sidestep U.S. sanctions.

Another Tides Center-housed project is the Catalyst Project, which praised Oct. 7 as a “historic act of resistance” that worked to thwart the “settler colonial regime” of Israel. Meanwhile, the Tides Center and its sister foundation, which have received over $81 million in federal funding since 2006, also bankroll standalone activist hubs sympathizing with terrorists.

The Tides groups support WESPAC Foundation, which has campaigned to free the long-imprisoned terrorist Ahmad Saadat, and also sponsors Students for Justice in Palestine, a coalition of pro-Palestinian activists on college campuses. The Tides Foundation supports IfNotNow and Jewish Voices for Peace, a pair of anti-Israel organizations behind, for example, a violent November 2023 protest outside the the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C.

One chapter of a Tides Foundation grantee, the climate-focused Sunrise Movement, wrote in a March op-ed in Columbia University’s student paper that it stands “in solidarity with calls to divest from Israel and corporations that sustain Israeli apartheid” and supports “a complete divestment from both fossil fuel companies and companies supporting the oppression of Palestinians.”

The Tides Foundation in 2022, moreover, sent a $104,000 check to Code Pink, the anti-Israel activists of which in June interrupted a recent appearance by Vice President Kamala Harris on Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show.

“You need to stop sending money to Israel,” one activist reportedly shouted at the vice president while she was on stage.

To attorney Marc Greendorfer, a terrorism financing analyst leading Zachor Legal Institute, progressive groups such as those in the Tides network pave the way for anti-Israel extremism to run rampant in the U.S.

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Last year, his group filed an IRS complaint accusing Alliance for Global Justice, which has received millions of dollars from the Tides Center and the Tides Foundation, of providing material support to terrorism.

“Unfortunately, as we have seen since the Palestinian massacre of Israelis on Oct. 7, many of the environmental and social justice groups now openly support Palestinian terror as well,” Greendorfer told the Washington Examiner.