(Picture above from the Phoenix New Times shows the founders of the Arizona Mirror.)
The Arizona Mirror started in 2018 and although the entity claims it’s an independent nonprofit, it quickly showed its far-left roots in its reporting in the Phoenix area.
In September 2018, the Arizona Mirror launched in the Grand Canyon state. The Phoenix New Times reported on this media outlet new to Arizona:
There’s a new media organization in town.
TRENDING: HUGE! Revolver News Breaks Report on Likely Deep State Plants Inside Jan. 6 Uprising — WAS IT ALL PLANNED?
The Arizona Mirror launched on Tuesday with a staff of four journalists who previously worked for Arizona Capitol Times and the Arizona Republic.
The site describes itself as “an independent, nonprofit news organization focused on connecting public policy with the people it affects.” The Mirror intends to do the sort of watchdog journalism that has been on the decline with the newspaper industry. The small staff has high aspirations: amplifying voices. Shining lights. Holding public officials accountable.
This Arizona Mirror entity claims it’s a nonprofit in its initial 990 filing. As a nonprofit, it is illegal to have a political bias. The firms that claim this status are immune from paying taxes:
The address in its initial filing above shows a location in North Carolina. The entity located at that location has a site labeled the States Newsroom. At this site, you can see links to the Arizona Mirror and multiple news sites across the country. The states in blue below are where the States Newsroom has affiliates. These entities and their makeup should be investigated by the Department of Justice. But of course, this won’t occur with the current DOJ. If these firms claim a nonprofit status then they should not have a liberal only bias in reporting which currently appears to be the case.
The Phoenix New Times continued about the Arizona Mirror:
…The site is funded by an obscure charity called the Hopewell Fund, which “specializes in helping donors, social entrepreneurs, and other changemakers quickly launch new, innovative projects.”
Finally, the site states that “The Mirror retains full editorial independence.”
Who is behind Hopewell Fund and why do they care about journalism in Arizona? Good luck finding that out!
…Previous attempts to unravel the source of Hopewell Fund’s money and the structure of the nonprofit left open many questions. Silicon Beat reported in 2016 that the group funded a campaign demanding greater transparency from Google. And Deadspin reported last year that Hopewell Fund — through a project called the Player’s Coalition — is the beneficiary of millions paid by the NFL in an an agreement to get players to stop kneeling during the national anthem.
As both of those reports noted, the Hopewell Fund is run by managers for a private consulting service called Arabella Advisors. That’s clear from the organization’s staff page, and Arabella CEO Sampriti Ganguli serves as the Hopewell Fund board treasurer.
It gets even more complicated. The disclosure form says that New Venture Fund, of which Bodner serves as president, pays the salaries for Hopewell Fund’s managers. Then Hopewell pays the amount of those salaries back to New Venture Fund.
Influence Watch shared the following on the Hopewell Fund:
The Hopewell Fund is a 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit managed by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based philanthropy consulting firm. The Hopewell Fund manages a number of left-of-center single-issue advocacy groups, including the Economic Security Project and pro-Obamacare Get America Covered.
The Hopewell Fund often operates alongside its “sister” nonprofits, primarily the 501(c)(4) Sixteen Thirty Fund and 501(c)(3) New Venture Fund, which both provide similar funding and fiscal sponsorship services to center-left advocacy organizations. All three funds are administered by Arabella Advisors, a Washington, D.C.-based philanthropy consulting firm that caters to left-leaning clients. The Windward Fund, another 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is also managed by Arabella Advisors and performs similar functions.
Influence Watch continues:
The Hopewell Fund, like all four nonprofits managed by the for-profit consultancy Arabella Advisors, primarily exists to sponsor a number of “fake” groups: websites designed to look like standalone nonprofits. These “fake” groups rarely become fully-fledged nonprofits; instead, they typically exist to effect an issue advocacy campaign pushing left-wing policies and may disappear after the campaign is finished. The Hopewell Fund is one of the newer of Arabella’s four nonprofits, founded in 2015, and most of the “fake” groups it sponsors are focused on expanding abortion access and criticizing President Donald Trump’s healthcare policies. [1]
The Economic Security Project was founded by BLM leader Alicia Garza.
The Hopewell fund has connections to Obama:
Michael Slaby is the board secretary of Hopewell Fund. Slaby previously worked as a Democratic Party operative and as chief technology for both of President Barack Obama’s campaigns.
It reports the following in its key staff webpage:
In 2019, the Hopewell Fund spent $11,027,778 in salaries and employee compensation. [19] In 2018, the Hopewell Fund spent $5,843,321 in salaries and employee compensation. [20] In 2017, the group spent $1,496,077 in salaries and employee compensation. [21]
Scott Nielsen is the managing director for Hopewell Fund, according to the group’s website. He was a Hopewell Fund board member from 2015 to 2016, but left the board in 2017; Nielsen is not reported as a paid employee or board member in the group’s 2018 or 2019 IRS Form 990 filings. [22] Nielsen has a long history of working for left-leaning organizations as he previously worked as a program director for the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and founded a consulting firm that provided services for left-wing organizations such as Open Society Foundations, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, and the Democracy Alliance. [23]
Megan Cavanaugh is a Hopewell Fund project director (2019 total compensation: $234,090). In 2018, she received total compensation of $234,178. [24] She is the managing director for Resources for Abortion Delivery, a project of Hopewell Fund which provides financial support to private abortion clinics. Cavanaugh was previously employed by Planned Parenthood Federation of America, where she worked as the national director for affiliate services. [25]
Courtney Cuff is a Hopewell Fund project director (2019 total compensation: $347,249). In 2018, she received total compensation of $349,866. [26] Cuff is executive director of the State Impact Project, a Hopewell Fund project that advocates for left-wing policies.
Tamer Mokhtar is a Hopewell Fund project director (2019 total compensation: $242,866). [27] Mokhtar is the founder of All Americans Vote, a left-of-center voter mobilization group that favors young and racial-minority voters expected to support the Democratic Party, and a former employee of Investing in US, a for-profit investment management firm founded by LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman and former Progressive Policy Institute senior fellow Dmitri Mehlhorn to fund left-wing causes. [28]
Natalie Foster is a Hopewell Fund project co-chair (2019 total compensation: $210,084). [29] Foster co-manages the Economic Security Project, a Hopewell Fund project that advocates for a federal universal basic income scheme with funding from Facebook co-founder and liberal donor Chris Hughes, eBay founder and Democratic donor Pierre Omidyar, George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, the Ford Foundation, and the Knight Foundation. [30] Foster is also a former Barack Obama campaign staffer and Democratic National Committee staffer who previously held leadership positions at the Sierra Club and MoveOn.org. [31]
Arabella Advisors is the entity running these far-left nonprofits:
Arabella’s nonprofits act as the left’s premier pass-through funders for professional activists. Big foundations—including the Gates, Buffett, and Ford Foundations—have laundered billions of dollars through this network, washing their identities from the dollars that go to push radical policies on America.
But the real juice from these nonprofits comes from the vast array of “pop-up groups” they run—called so because they consist almost solely of slick websites that may pop into existence one day and pop out the next, usually once the campaign is through. We’ve counted over 350 such front groups pushing everything from federal funding of abortion to overhauling Obamacare to packing the Supreme Court.
