New Venture Fund

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The New Venture Fund (NVF) is a 501(c)(3) non-profit organization founded by Eric Kessler in 2006 under the name the Arabella Legacy Fund. In 2009, the organization changed its name to the New Venture Fund. The purpose of the organization is to operate donor-driven public interest projects in a wide-range of focus areas including public policy, education, and conservation. New Venture Fund operates out of a space occupied by Arabella Advisors, a for-profit consulting agency based in Washington D.C. The President of the New Venture Fund, Lee Bodner, is a former managing director at Arabella Advisors. The former President of NVF, Eric Kessler, is now the President at NVF's affiliated 501(c)(4), the Sixteen Thirty Fund.

Projects

The New Venture Fund acts as a fiscal sponsor that manages and handles legal compliance for over 100 other groups and organizations.

Allied Progress, launched in 2015, advocates in defense of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and for regulation of the lending industry. Allied Progress criticized President Trump's nominees to lead the Departments of Labor, Commerce, and Treasury. Allied Progress has an affiliated political advocacy arm that was a project of the Sixteen Thirty Fund, a 501(c)(4) affiliate of the New Venture Fund.

Another project funded through the New Venture Fund that has risen to prominence during the Trump administration is the Western Values Project. According to its website, the Western Values Project defends America's public lands by holding policymakers and special interests accountable.

Accountable.US launched in November 2019. Accountable.US brings together three New Venture Fund projects under one umbrella: Western Values Project; Allied Progress; and Restore Public Trust, which attacks what it calls corruption in the Trump Administration. The president of Accountable.US, Kyle Herrig, currently serves on the board of a liberal watchdog group and also previously served as a program director at the New Venture Fund. Accountable's board "is made up of veteran communicators, oversight officials and Democratic operatives", according to The Huffington Post.

In total, the Washington Free Beacon estimates New Venture Fund and other groups tied to Arabella Advisors have spent over $1 billion to back left-leaning activists and interest groups since early 2017. According to POLITICO, one of these projects, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, spent more than $141 million on left-leaning causes in the 2018 midterm elections.

Funding

New Venture Fund increased its revenue from $16 million in 2010 to over $300 million in 2018. According to news analysis, of the $359 million the New Venture Fund raised in 2017, 92% of that money was spent on grants to other organizations or individuals, lobbying, and projects.

While donors to NVF are generally anonymous, campaign finance records and analysis of other nonprofit tax returns have revealed some donors. The Associated Press reported that a $2 million NVF contribution for a ballot measure “ultimately originates from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, timber magnate and former Democratic Secretary of State Dick Molpus and former Netscape and FedEx executive Jim Barksdale.”

NVF has been “heavily supported” by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and the Ford Foundation. These foundations have given NVF at least $94 million, $17 million, and $12 million, respectively.

Criticism

The New Venture Fund has been criticized by right-leaning groups for being a “dark money” outfit that obscures the source of the funds used for its various projects. NVF’s tax structure “allows it to withhold the names of donors whose funds end up financing advocacy,” according to the Washington Free Beacon.

The Capital Research Center, a conservative research organization, alleges that Arabella Advisors funnels hundreds of millions of dollars of dark money into left-leaning causes through non-profit organizations that it manages, including the New Venture Fund and the Sixteen Thirty Fund. According to Roll Call, left-leaning dark money groups accounted for 54 percent of the $150 million spent in the 2018 midterms. NVF’s advocacy sister group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, received $50 million in 2018 from one unnamed donor.

The Washington Free Beacon reports that in 2018, New Venture Fund’s sister group, the Sixteen Thirty Fund, created a network of Facebook pages of “fake” state-based news organizations to create ads against President Trump and Republican health care policy. The group spent nearly $50,000 to boost these Facebook ads over a period of three weeks. The news outlet claimed this was “similar to Russian disinformation efforts in 2016 using social media.”

E&E News reported that former Secretary of the Interior Ryan Zinke has called into question the funding sources of the New Venture Fund’s Western Values Project, and has said, “they need to be investigated.”

Related Organizations

Along with New Venture Fund, Arabella Advisors also manages non-profit groups such as Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund--all of which operate out of the offices of Arabella Advisors.

References

This article "New Venture Fund" is from Wikipedia. The list of its authors can be seen in its historical and/or the page Edithistory:New Venture Fund. Articles copied from Draft Namespace on Wikipedia could be seen on the Draft Namespace of Wikipedia and not main one.

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