Time to Revoke the Tax-Exempt Status of Nonprofits and Dismantle Private Oligarchical Control over our Policy-making Institutions

Who really controls American policy? This exposé reveals how tax-exempt foundations and nonprofits, backed by billionaires, shape elections, schools, and city governments—posing the question: is it time to end their tax-free power?

Time to Revoke the Tax-Exempt Status of Nonprofits and Dismantle Private Oligarchical Control over our Policy-making Institutions

Continuing revelations by courageous reporters have highlighted once again that no intention to clean out the “Deep State”—to both protect the American People and reassert Constitutional government—will succeed unless the private tax-exempt Foundations, Non-Profits and Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs) are stripped of their ability to influence elections and subvert law enforcement and policy making, from the national level down to the local school house. 

The ominous influence and power of the Foundations, Non-Profits and NGOs has been recognized by some individuals for a number of years.  This author published a two-part series, “Know Thy Enemy: The Modern Oligarchical Democracy” (Part 1 & Part 2) in 2023. 

Also of note has been Chris Rufo’s exposés of the role of non-profits in corrupting American schoolchildren (see, e.g., his “How the Trans Movement Conquered American Life“) and Michael Lind’s personal reflection, “The End of Progressive Intellectual Life:  How the Foundation-NGO complex quashed innovative thinking and open debate,” published in Tablet magazine, April 12, 2022.  Many others have contributed to this effort.

Now, however, more disclosures are coming to light. 

In this article, we shall look at just two of them.  First is the piece by Logan Washburn, “Meet The Wealthy Private Firms Controlling The Democrat Party,” published on the Federalist website, April 22, 2025. 

Meet The Wealthy Private Firms Controlling The Democrat Party
Financial Investment Corporation and Apax, along with subsidiary Bonterra, gained control over much of the American left’s infrastructure.

The second consists of a series of investigations by Oakland political activist Seneca Scott, presented on his Gotham Oakland YouTube channel, most notably his May 3rd video, “ Meet the New Boss... Same as the Old Boss: Oakland Mayor Barbara Lee’s ‘Transition’ Team.

Logan Washburn’s article is a deep dive into the world of Democratic Party financing and operations.  In particular, he examines the roles of key institutions, almost none of which are known by the general public.  These include Apax Partners and its subsidiary Bonterra.

The London-based Apax is one of the world’s largest private equity funds, and a roster of its founders and CEOs reads like a list of London and Manhattan bluebloods.

History | Our Firm | Apax Partners
Founded nearly 50 years ago, Apax Partners is a leading global private equity advisory firm.

Minor parts of the firm are regulated in the UK, the rest are incorporated in the tax havens of Guernsey, the Cayman Islands, and Luxembourg.  Apax was founded in 1972, immediately following the abolition of the Bretton-Woods monetary system.

Apax’s Bonterra subsidiary today services more than 650,000 nonprofits which together direct the activities of 38 million volunteers worldwide.  According to Washburn’s article, the London-based Apax, through Bonterra, now controls more than “50 percent of the left’s get-out-the-vote, canvassing, text messaging, and calling infrastructure” inside the United States, almost exclusively on behalf of the Democratic Party.

This is because Bonterra now owns the entire voter database of the Democratic Party dating back decades through its purchase of NGP-VAN, the company which has been used to accumulate all data on Democratic voters or potential Democratic voters for decades.

Washburn’s other focus is the notorious Arabella Advisors, the primary controller of nonprofits associated with the “progressive” wing of the Democratic Party. 

Arabella has been responsible for providing billions of dollars and an army of “volunteers” to back ballot initiatives and legal actions across America on behalf of drug legalization, defunding the police, transgender rights and defending illegal immigrants. 

It exploits a tax loophole which allows its clients to remain dark and anonymous. Be clear, however, that Arabella is not a “grass roots” organization.  Arabella is owned by Concentric Equity Partners, a subsidiary of the private investment firm Financial Investments Corporation, and Financial Investments CEO, Jennifer Steans, is also the president of Arabella.

The largest single donor to Arabella is the tax-exempt Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.  Other major contributors included the Susan Thompson Buffett Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Wyss Foundation, run by Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss. And, of course, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar.  All the donations to Arabella by these financial oligarchs are tax-exempt.

In a very accurate sense, these foundations, along with the private equity funds and the nonprofits associated with them, are today the new Money Trust, a concentration of enormous financial potency that has created a powerful political apparatus for the purpose of imposing their own private oligarchical agenda.  To a large extent much of what passes for elected government and political debate today is a sham. 

Most of the Democrats in Congress (and on the state and local level) take their marching orders and talking points from the Trust-controlled foundations and nonprofits, like Indivisible and a plethora of others, all financed by super-wealthy donors. 

Act Blue, the Democrats' main fundraising platform is presently under investigation for laundering millions of foreign dollars into U.S. election campaigns either anonymously or through straw donors listed on FEC reports.  The claimed donors say they never contributed to the campaigns in question.   

Saving a Dying City, Oakland California

Seneca Scott, a local Oakland activist, has produced an ongoing series of podcasts, which among other things have investigated what he calls, “How the Progressives have captured U.S. cities.” 

These podcasts could be described as a work-in-progress, but already Seneca has honed in on the channeling of “dark money” into 501(c)3 and 501(c)4 nonprofits to seize control of every policy-making agency in the city.  Among the groups which Scott discuses are the San Francisco Foundation, the Akonadi Foundation, the Tides Center and the Chinese Progressive Association, all of which funnel huge amounts of money into thousands on nonprofits.

What Scott does is a forensic investigation.  He states that the first target of the modern Money Trust, in Oakland and elsewhere, has been the schools,—to take control of the school boards and then the schools themselves—to eliminate any attempts to actually educate schoolchildren and to impose a curriculum centered on gender-studies, critical race theory and green ideology.  Then they targeted the City Council for takeover.  The same nonprofits run the defund-the-police campaign, which includes both violent protests as well as seizing control over the Police Commission.  Top police officials who refuse to acquiesce to the lenient and “woke” mandates of the Police Commission are quickly ousted (Oakland has had 13 Police Chiefs in the last 14 years).  Oakland now leads the entire Bay area in murders in 2025.

Scott also reveals how essential city services have been turned over to NGOs and nonprofits, who now receive taxpayer money for this “progressive” privatization.   His primary point, however, is that the destruction of Oakland, and many other cities, has been deliberate.  The nonprofits and NGOs have now taken over mental health services, drug policy, tenants’ rights groups and homelessness policy, and all of these crises keep getting worse, as more and more money flows into the nonprofits.  The foundations now provide millions of dollars to maintain a permanent homeless population, serviced by an army of nonprofit volunteers.  Meanwhile, the political leadership of the city has driven Oakland into bankruptcy.

End this Oligarchical Scam Now!

Defeating the new Money Trust of Foundations, Private Equity Funds, NGOs and nonprofits would not be hard to do.  But it requires Congressmen and political leaders with morality, with a backbone.  The first step is easy—if the courage exists to do it.  Namely this:

Immediately abolish the tax-exempt status for all foundations, NGOs, nonprofits (including all 501(C)3s and 501(C)4s), and other related organizations.  Organizations which are provably involved in direct charitable activity, such as running soup kitchens, etc., could still be given charitable tax exemptions, although these should be carefully scrutinized and held to a rigorous standard.  Everything else the “non-profit” Trust is involved in should be taxed and transparent.  Everything. 

For those who think this is a shocking proposal, be aware that this is precisely what was proposed way back in 1963, when the U.S. House Select Committee on Small Business, under its Chairman Congressman Wright Patman, after a years-long investigation into the wealthy foundations, issued two reports, wherein they concluded that, “The economic life of our nation has become so intertwined with foundations that unless something is done about it, they will hold a dominant position in every phase of American life.”  Patman’s Committee recommended not only ending the tax-exempt status of foundations but also placing a 25-year limit on the lifespan of foundations and banning financial ties between foundations and corporations.

The first of the great Family Foundations, the Rockefeller Foundation, was created in 1913.  That same year, Congress enacted, and Woodrow Wilson signed the Revenue Act of 1913, which legalized the creation of what became the 501(C)3 and 501(C)4 nonprofits.  Now more than a century later, Patman’s 1963 warning that foundations will soon “hold a dominant position in every phase of American life,” has become true in spades.  There are now over 400,000 nonprofit organizations in the United States and more than 100,000 private foundations.  All tax-exempt, all self-perpetuating.  The only way to truthfully characterize this is that they have become a private parallel government with hundreds of billions of dollars at its disposal.

No Republic can continue to exist under these conditions.  Our Constitution mandates government by the elected representatives of the People.  That is how laws are passed and policy made.  It is way past time to reject completely rule by a private financial oligarchy.

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