Power Grab - Jason Chaffetz Page 0,15
its audits of conservative nonprofits.
Chapter 2
The Weaponization of Public Charities
We expect nonprofit 501(c)(4) advocacy groups to engage in politics. But we see charities as nonpolitical. The 501(c)(3) charities legally have very little latitude to engage in partisan politics. But because the assets and income they control are so much more substantial than those of advocacy groups, the temptation to repurpose them for political use is real. Weaponizing 501(c)(3) charities for political purposes is not easy. But where there is a will, there is a way.
It’s important to understand the enormity of the resources some of these charities control. Let’s start by looking at the Planned Parenthood Federation, a 501(c)(3) charitable organization.
In their 2016 Form 990 return, the Planned Parenthood Federation had assets totaling more than $446 million—almost half a billion dollars. We looked at a cross section of thirty-four independent U.S. Planned Parenthood organizations, including the Federation, and calculated combined total assets of $1,726,804,908 (yes, $1.7 billion) at the end of 2016. In most cases, this reflected large increases across-the-board in donations during the 2016 election cycle. This was not even the full complement of Planned Parenthood organizations—just a cross section.
The Federation’s endowment funds were valued at almost $88 million in 2013 and had grown to over $157 million in their 2016 financial report—an incredible rate of growth. Keep in mind that the Federation does not supply direct services to the public. That is done by the various Planned Parenthood organizations throughout the country, each with its respective revenue and budgets. The Planned Parenthood Federation is a coordinating and advocacy body.
Even this is not the complete picture. Planned Parenthood has international organizations that are directly related to its Federation in the United States. It has forged relationships with UNESCO and UNFPA, the former referring twenty times to Planned Parenthood as a source for sex education and abortion in its revised “Comprehensive Sexuality Standards” (February 2018). It is also in partnership with more than one hundred organizations across Africa and Latin America.
In its 2016 IRS report, International Planned Parenthood Foundation/Western Hemisphere Region stated that it worked with fifty partner organizations in forty countries. It described “averting two million unintended pregnancies” and working with partners to facilitate nineteen country-level policy changes.
At CSW62 (Commission on the Status of Women, 2018), African country delegates described how sexual reproductive health services now received more funding in Africa than those providing for fresh water, education, or economic development. That’s a shocking statistic, but it got hardly any play in the U.S. media. Funding for sexual reproductive health services has increased 1,923 percent between 1993 and 2012. They are experiencing pushback from traditionalist countries such as Burkina Faso, which described how they resented having funding for humanitarian purposes tied to whether they would create abortion clinics. The work of Planned Parenthood Global and other similar organizations was described by them as ideological colonization. This Western institution has swept into Africa, looking to decrease the African population rather than offer life-supporting services and education. Imperialism is alive and well on the left.
Among all of these organizations, Planned Parenthood controls vast amounts of wealth. Of course, they cannot simply use these resources to buy elections. That would be illegal. That’s where Grassroots Campaigns Inc. comes in.
Grassroots Campaigns Inc.
One of the most influential groups you’ve probably never heard of is a for-profit organization founded in 2003 “with the goal of building support for progressive candidates, parties and causes through engaging everyday people in political action.” As a for-profit entity, they have no restrictions on political activity. They count as one of their clients Planned Parenthood’s 501(c)(3) charity.
They credit themselves with some of America’s biggest political success stories. After its first year, Grassroots Campaigns had staff in more than forty cities canvassing on behalf of the Democratic National Committee. According to its website:
In October of 2004, Grassroots Campaigns joined forces with MoveOn in order to identify and activate Democratic voters. During this campaign, we recruited a volunteer force of almost 50,000 people and worked in 17 of the most highly contested swing states. Following the election, we helped launch a nation-wide project called Operation Democracy through which we organized grassroots activists to end Republican control of Congress. Operation Democracy laid the groundwork for the 2006 Call for Change Campaign in which we ran massive volunteer phone banks that turned out infrequent Democratic voters in over 50 congressional districts. Our hard work paid off that November when we successfully took back Congress.
For 2008, the organization’s website claims credit for helping organize 7,480