Investigation traces a Democrat-favoring “vote machine” hiding inside the charitable sector, from criminal voter-registration fraud charges to a $66 million redistricting fight in Virginia.
ARLINGTON, VA — The Capital Research Center (CRC) today released The “Charities” Influencing Elections 2024 and beyond, a 64-page investigative report documenting how tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charities—legally barred from partisan political work—have become one of the largest, least-scrutinized centers of political money in the country.
Drawing on newly released IRS filings, leaked strategy memos, and the groups’ own reports, CRC finds that a sample of 83 of the largest 501(c)(3) voter-registration and get-out-the-vote organizations spent roughly $638 million in 2024—a 30% jump over 2020 (about 10% after inflation)—at a time when spending through traditional PACs fell by roughly 20%. In other words, as legitimate political spending shrank, nonprofit election-meddling surged. And while donors to traditional PACs and party groups are disclosed, donors to nonprofits are not.
“Americans deserve to know whether tax-deductible charitable contributions are being illicitly used to subsidize partisan political operations,” said CRC President Scott Walter. “This report follows the money and reveals a coordinated infrastructure working to influence who votes, how districts are drawn, how we elect our President, and ultimately who controls the government. Congress, the IRS, and state authorities need to examine these findings and hold ‘charities’ accountable.”
The report—written by CRC investigators Parker Thayer, Robert Stilson, and journalist Fred Lucas—is built around a simple through-line: much of the “money in politics” that voters distrust doesn’t flow through political channels—it hides within charities that pretend to be nonpartisan.
The report’s findings include
- Criminal charges, not just paperwork errors. The Everybody Votes Campaign—which raised more than $75 million in 2024—paid a canvassing firm, Field+Media Corps, whose employees were later charged by Pennsylvania’s attorney general with forgery and tampering with public records after thousands of allegedly fraudulent registration forms were submitted in swing districts. One Everybody Votes grantee, the New Georgia Project, was fined $300,000 by state authorities and later dissolved.
- A charity that filtered out NASCAR fans. The Voter Participation Center was caught steering digital registration ads away from people interested in NASCAR, “Duck Dynasty,” and golf—prompting a member of Congress to demand an IRS investigation. The Center also received a cease-and-desist order from Maryland’s attorney general over mailers that threatened to tell recipients’ neighbors if they didn’t vote.
- “Blood bags.” CRC documents a new tactic in which brand-new 501(c)(3) charities route upward of 95% of their budgets straight to affiliated 501(c)(4) nonprofit arms that heavily engage in politics. One such charity reported spending $532 on office costs—and sending more than $20 million to its political affiliate.
- The suppression narrative, refuted by its own authors. Groups that spent years claiming Georgia’s election law would suppress minority turnout published their own 2025 research showing turnout among those communities actually rose in 2024—even as the same groups pivoted to opposing federal proof-of-citizenship requirements.
- Rewriting the map and the rules. The report traces more than $66 million behind Virginia’s April 2026 redistricting ballot measure—the most expensive in state history—as well as the philanthropic networks that fund the National Popular Vote Compact (designed to effectively abolish the Electoral College and now just 48 electoral votes short of taking effect) and ranked-choice voting, which voters have rejected repeatedly and 19 states have now banned.
- Taxpayers helped fund it. Several federally funded nonprofits, some of which received tens of millions in federal tax dollars, ran voter-mobilization operations alongside their government-funded work.
The report also examines decades-long efforts by supposedly nonpartisan philanthropies to meddle with the U.S. Census, which alters distribution of seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and votes in the Electoral College. This little-known “charitable” scheme received $118 million (2020), up from $38 million (2010), with early planning for 2030 already underway.
The “Charities” Influencing Elections is available in full at:
https://capitalresearch.org/publication/charities-influencing-elections/
About Capital Research Center
Founded in 1984, the Capital Research Center is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. As America’s investigative think tank, CRC connects the dots between the philanthropic sector and the organizations that influence public policy, so the public knows which special interests are being protected.
MEDIA CONTACT
Bryan Leib
[email protected]
