Bill Gates to Stop Grantmaking via Arabella Advisors

With the nation’s attention elsewhere last night, the New York Times reported that the Gates Foundation has broken off grantmaking to the nonprofit “dark money” network managed by Arabella Advisors. Theodore Schleifer writes:

The Gates Foundation decided in late June to halt making grants to nonprofit funds administered by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, according to an internal foundation announcement reviewed by The New York Times.

That decision, attributed to the foundation’s chief executive, Mark Suzman, has sparked unease in the world of progressive philanthropy. Some nonprofits that work with Arabella are already seeking distance from the firm in order to preserve their relationships with the Gates Foundation, which primarily supports health initiatives around the globe.

Capital Research Center identified the Gates Foundation (then bearing the name of Bill Gates’s now-ex-wife, Melinda French Gates) as the second-largest identified contributor to the Arabella-managed New Venture Fund over the 2018-2022 period after only Fidelity Charitable, the nation’s largest provider of donor-advised funds. And we’re not talking chump change—it’s hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Times shared more of interest. Schleifer writes:

Arabella argues that its critics vastly overstate its political influence and that it merely “provides operational supports to hundreds of philanthropic clients pursuing social change,” Megan Cartier, Arabella’s chief marketing and communications officer, said in a statement. “We do not have donors, make grants, or engage in political activity.”

This is, at best, the old fact-checker’s dodge of “true but false.” Arabella itself may not have donors, make grants, or engage in political activities, but the “seven sisters” nonprofits that Arabella manages absolutely do all those things. Here’s the chart of just the identified money shuffling around Arabella’s network alone:

Credit: Capital Research Center.

The stakes for Arabella and the Left are high, Schleifer reports. He writes:

Client departures would also deal a blow to Arabella itself. While the New Venture Fund is a nonprofit entity on its own, it is a significant moneymaker for Arabella Advisors, which is a for-profit company. In 2020, Arabella was bought by a private-equity firm, Concentric Equity Partners, and generated over $60 million in revenue in 2022, according to its internal 2023 study.

For more on “the dark money network of leftist billionaires secretly transforming America,” read our president Scott Walter’s book Arabella.