The foundation contributed $450 million to Arabella, making it one of the network’s largest supporters
Liberal billionaire Bill Gates’s foundation has stopped contributing to funds controlled by the consulting firm Arabella Advisors, delivering a major blow to the progressive dark money network, according to a Tuesday report.
The Gates Foundation, the largest charitable foundation in the United States, decided in late June to freeze its longstanding grants to the nonprofit funds administered by Arabella, the New York Times reported after reviewing an internal announcement. The foundation has disbursed or pledged around $450 million to the Arabella-managed funds over the past 16 years, making it one of the network’s earliest and largest sources of support, according to the Times.
The foundation’s move comes as President Donald Trump has taken aim at some Democratic nonprofits for abusing their tax-exempt status by operating as partisan political machines rather than genuine charities. Gates announced earlier this year that he will permanently shutter his foundation on Dec. 31, 2045—decades earlier than planned. He has also begun “de-emphasizing the type of diversity and inclusion initiatives that Mr. Trump abhors, to insulate his charity from political pressure,” the Times reported.
Foundation officials avoided any mention of politics in a June 24 memo to some of the staffers overseeing grant programs. Instead, the officials framed the move as an effort to work more directly with grant recipients and reduce reliance on intermediaries like Arabella. The decision to cut ties with Arabella was “a business decision,” the foundation said in a statement to the Times.
Arabella has long faced scrutiny for funding a network of nonprofit organizations that funnels money from its billionaire benefactors into progressive lobbying, activism, and elections. The Arabella-controlled Student Experience Research Network, for example, funds research that promotes DEI practices in education, the Washington Free Beacon reported. Recently, Arabella donated $5.6 million to two left-wing nonprofits spearheading protests against Trump’s Washington, D.C., crime crackdown, according to a New York Post report.
Gates’s foundation has also had its share of controversies over the years. The foundation has a long history of funding and partnering with controversial foreign entities, including those run by the Chinese Communist Party.
In 2023, the foundation launched a $50 million research partnership with Tsinghua University, which holds “secret-level security credentials” for China’s classified military research, trains students for Beijing’s nuclear weapons program, and has reportedly conducted cyberattacks on behalf of the Chinese government. Two years earlier, the foundation also funneled millions to China’s National Health Commission and Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs.
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