InfluenceWatch Podcast #387: Goodbye, Arabella; Hello…Arabella?

Arabella Advisors, we hardly knew ye. The once obscure, multi-billion dollar, private-equity-owned machine of leftist funding has gone the way of the dinosaurs. Or has it?

Arabella, an organization we here at CRC worked diligently to help bring into the light, has in fact, after being rather publicly and unceremoniously dumped by the Gates Foundation in June, simply split, been restructured, been sold, and/or rebranded, depending on your perspective. The two new entities born of Arabella’s demise are Sunflower Services, a public benefit corporation, and Vital Impact, a philanthropic consulting firm that most resembles the former dark money machine. The three 501(c)(3) workhorse nonprofits housed under the former Arabella, who often served as fiscal sponsors for other nonprofits and from which the funding flowed – New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund – are now investors in the aforementioned Sunflower Services and have vowed to continue the work of helping leftist nonprofits accomplish their goals on everything from DEI, to abortion, to social justice. But there are many questions remaining, with perhaps the most interesting: what happens to Arabella’s most political entities, the 501(c)(4)s, notably the notorious Sixteen Thirty Fund? And what prompted them to make this momentous change?

Listen to “Ep. 387: Goodbye Arabella, Hello…Arabella?” on Spreaker.

• Chronicle of Philanthropy: Arabella Advisors Dissolves After Years of GOP-Led Investigations
• Capital Research Center: Bill Gates to Stop Grantmaking via Arabella Advisors
• Encounter Books: Arabella
• The Hill: Bill Gates may have just set off the death of far-left-tainted philanthropy
• Daily Signal: What, Exactly, Just Happened to the Left’s Dark Money Behemoth Arabella Advisors?