Crowdsourcers, Ginni Thomas group, Uses Fiscal Sponsorship Via CRC

March 29, 2023

Interesting story out of the Washington Post this week looking at the use of fiscal sponsorship by a Ginni Thomas related group called Crowdsourcers, formed ostensibly to counter the left, via the Conservative nonprofit Capital Research Center (CRC), a group focused on uncovering dark money groups on the left.

From the story: “A little-known conservative activist group led by Virginia “Ginni” Thomas, the wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, collected nearly $600,000 in anonymous donations to wage a cultural battle against the left over three years, a Washington Post investigation found.

The previously unreported donations to the fledgling group Crowdsourcers for Culture and Liberty were channeled through a right-wing think tank in Washington that agreed to serve as a funding conduit from 2019 until the start of last year, according to documents and interviews. The arrangement, known as a “fiscal sponsorship,” effectively shielded from public view details about Crowdsourcers’ activities and spending, information it would have had to disclose publicly if it operated as a separate nonprofit organization, experts said.

The Post’s investigation sheds new light on the role money from donors who are not publicly identified has played in supporting Ginni Thomas’s political advocacy, long a source of controversy. The funding is the first example of anonymous donors backing her activism since she founded a conservative charity more than a decade ago. She stepped away from that charity amid concerns that it created potential conflicts for her husband on hot-button issues before the court.”

Also:

“Philip Hackney, a former IRS attorney who is now an associate law professor at the University of Pittsburgh, said such arrangements are not uncommon or improper. He said they do allow the start-up group to avoid having to disclose information that independent nonprofits must reveal in annual tax filings, such as its officers or details about its spending.

“You would be able to keep names and salaries off of any documents,” he said.

Indeed, Thomas’s title in Crowdsourcers is not a matter of public record and could not be determined.”

Philip Hackney

Posted in:

Current Affairs and In the News