Billionaire Donors Flocking To Sunrise Movement

The environmentally-focused 'dark money' group has steadily billed themselves as a youth-led, "grassroots" organization. The problem: many of their donors don't necessarily reflect that.

Over the last few years, environmental activism group Sunrise Movement has become one of the leading forces in progressive political circles. Along the way, the group has stolen the spotlight with their often times antagonistic approach to activism, such as staging sit-ins in Congressional offices and playing huge roles in organizing many civic protests since their founding in 2017. Their influence has only increased in the time since, amassing and a large social media following and earning praise from progressive journalists and politicians alike. The group has billed itself as a coalition of young people taking to the streets to organize movements that push politicians to implement climate change legislation, primarily the “Green New Deal”. In their campaigns to support and elect progressive Democrats such as Bernie Sanders, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and other members of “The Squad”, the group has very publicly decried the influence that billionaire megadonors and dark money organizations have on our elections, building a brand of being “grassroots”—in other words, being ran and funded by small donors and ground-level activists. However, since 2019, Sunrise has began to attract more and more financial support from billionaire, institutional, and dark money sources.

According to Sunrise Movement’s 2019 tax returns, the organization pulled in a total of $7.8 million during the year—with its 501c3 arm, Sunrise Movement Education Fund pulling in over $4.2 million, and its 501c4 , simply called Sunrise, bringing in $3.6 million. Regarding the latter, small donors only made up 42 percent of Sunrise’s funding, with 6 donors of six-figures making up 35 percent, and donors of $5,000—$75,000 accounted for the rest. Although Sunrise Movement—themselves being a dark money group—claims to be “committed to financial transparency and accountability”, they do not disclose the identities of their donors. With small donors making up now less than half of Sunrise’s donations, the question becomes—where is the big money coming from? It turns out, from some pretty influential sources.

Per their website, George Soros’ Open Society Policy Center made a $500,000 grant to Sunrise in 2019—making Soros’ nonprofit on of the largest donors to Sunrise Movement that year. Their relationship with Soros continued during the 2020 election, albeit in the form of Sunrise’s PAC, which raised $2,350,779 during the cycle. The PAC’s largest outside donor was dark-money powerhouse Sixteen Thirty Fund ($500,000), followed by Democracy PAC, the personal Super PAC of George Soros, which is primarily funded by his Fund For Policy Reform shell nonprofit, which donated $250,000. In addition to being a hugely influential figure and Democratic party megadonor, he does have investments that would profit from a “Green Transition”—his hedge fund has bought into electric vehicle battery developer Quantumscape, though that specific example is rather recent. More troubling however is the fact that earlier this year, Soros Fund Management disclosed a $39 million investment in Golar LNG, a liquid natural gas company focused on maritime transportation. He also continues to maintain problematic investments in fossil fuel companies such as Dakota Access Pipeline owners Energy Transfer Partners, as well as Enterprise Products Partners L.P., who owns a series of pipelines in Texas.

Another major player in Democratic party circles is Elizabeth “Liz” Simons, daughter of billionaire megadonor Jim Simons (of Renaissance Technologies fame). Simons, and her husband, Mark Heising, donated $450,000 to the Sunrise Movement Education Fund in 2019, through their private foundation. Simons was a major donor in the 2020 cycle, donating over $750,000 to Joe Biden’s Victory Fund, $505,000 to Democrat supporting Super PAC SMP, $500,000 to House Majority PAC (another Super PAC"), and also made six-figure donations to several other groups, such as Way To Lead and Win Justice. For his part, Heising was also rather active during the election, donating $250,000 to the Biden Action Fund and over $240,000 directly to the Democratic National Committee.

Sunrise also received $500,000 from the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation in 2019, the legacy philanthropic fund started by the late cofounder of Hewlett-Packard Bill Hewlett and his late wife, Flora. During the year, the foundation was a major donor to not only left-wing groups like New Venture Fund and Center For American Progress, it also made substantial donations to a few groups on the right as well, such as The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute. The Hewlett Foundation’s assets measure into the billions, and quite a few of their largest holdings could be seen as being in direct contrast with what “progressive” groups such a Sunrise stand for. Hewlett Foundation owns tens of millions of dollars worth of stock in major gas and electric utility companies, such as Eversource, XCEL, and WEC Energy—all of which are the largest such energy suppliers in their respective states. The foundation holds significant funds in pharmaceutical companies such as Alexion and Novartis—but holds over $30 million in Microsoft, Alibaba Group, Alphabet/Google, and Facebook.

2019 also brought Sunrise Movement also a $300,000 grant from the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, a private family endowment of the Rockefeller family that traces its 1940 founding to the four sons of John D. Rockefeller Jr. Not only does the $1.2 billion foundation still draws from the famous family's fortune (David Rockefeller recently donated $250 million), it also draws funding from a myriad of investments—some that could be troublesome for progressive beneficiaries. Notably, RBF has numerous holdings in the banking (Citi, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America), insurance (Anthem, CVS, UnitedHealth), tech (Google, Apple, Microsoft) and pharmaceutical industries (Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Gilead)—but also owned over $40 million in defense company L3 Harris and $24 million in Raytheon as of the end of 2019—and scattered throughout RBF's massive portfolio that year, the foundation still maintained small investments in oil companies Enbridge (Dakota Access Pipeline), TC Energy (Keystone Pipeline), and Halliburton, the latter of which being worth nearly $2 million.

The Wallace Global Fund, a private foundation whose funding primarily comes from its investment funds—which per their website has been fossil fuel free since 2014—donated $250,000 to Sunrise in 2019, as well as $750,000 to over a dozen of their partnered groups. Though WGF’s website doesn’t seem to be up to date, it claims three main funds:

1. The North Sky Clean Tech Fund, which claims Tesla and Verengo Solar as some of its successful investments.

2. The New Alternatives Fund, which is stated to be the “first environmental mutual fund”. Some of the fund’s global investments include Whole Foods, Vestas Wind Systems, and Panasonic.

3. Generation Credit Fund, which is chaired by former Vice President Al Gore, and “focuses on making loans to sustainable companies”

Nearly all of WGF’s entire business model is profiting from investments made in companies that would greatly benefit under a Green New Deal based economic structure.

Tides Advocacy, the 501(c)(4) wing of the Tides Foundation, donated $175,000 to Sunrise in 2019. Of the roughly $52,000,000 Tides Advocacy raised that year, approximately $18,000,000 came from the aforementioned parent foundation, themselves bringing in over $500,000,000—and spending over $457,000,000—during that same time. The Tides Network of nonprofits, which include Tides Advocacy, Tides Center, and Tides Foundation, draw their funding from numerous hard-to-trace sources, such as donor-advised funds, billionaire funded private foundations, or other opaque nonprofits—with Tides Advocacy being the most dark money driven, politically focused of the group, even without being the best funded.

The Women Donors Network, a philanthropic nonprofit comprised as a club of primarily anonymous donors, gave Sunrise $200,000 in 2019. WDN raised $9,136,416 that year, with their largest known donor being the Chicago Community Trust, which gave $3,010,000 to the organization, making up roughly a third of its funding. Sunrise Movement’s Education Fund has also taken donations from other notable institutions, such as $250,000 from the Ford Foundation, $100,000 from the Schmidt Foundation (namesake nonprofit of former Google/Alphabet chairman Eric Schmidt, and his wife Wendy), and roughly $25,000 from the Annenberg Foundation, the namesake foundation of philanthropist and billionaire media mogul, Wallis Annenberg and her family, who have also been major supporters of center-left causes and foundations throughout the years.

The problem facing Sunrise Movement, and many other progressive-branded groups, is how they are able to reconcile their anti-billionaire rhetoric with the fact that an ever-increasing portion of their funding is coming from those very same sources—some of whom have major sway within Democratic circles. While Sunrise says on its website: “We do not accept donations or contributions ‘with strings attached’ that are contrary to our mission.”, there have been reports from people inside the organization which claim that to be untrue, and that major donors have actively encouraged less polarizing or antagonistic action from ground-level organizers—more so as time goes on. Sunrise has grown exponentially since their recent founding (from a $35,000 seed from Sierra Club), and now wield influence on a national scale—speaking engagements at billionaire donor club Democracy Alliance conferences, bing part of the Biden-Sanders “task force” on climate, and even allegedly having monthly Zoom meetings with members of the Biden White House.

What comes next, and who pays for it, remains to be seen.