Of the innumerable far-Left organizations funded by the Open Society Foundations (OSF), few are as potent as the Tides Center, also known simply as Tides. Established almost 50 years ago, the San Francisco-based, 501(c)(3) nonprofit is a philanthropy behemoth. During this century it has snagged seven- and eight-figure donations from such well-endowed sources as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the California Endowment, and the Union Square Foundation. And it just may be hitting full stride.
George Soros’ Open Society Foundations figures in this heavily. An investigation published in the New York Post in October 2023 found that OSF provided $13.7 million to Tides during 2016-22. Earlier, during 2007-09, it had donated a combined $3.5 million.
How does one explain such prodigious donations? The answer lies partly in the common goal held by Tides mega-donors and officials – a centrally-managed, global supra-nation in which “social justice” takes precedence over liberty, and in which a manipulative, quasi-religious “compassion” permeates politics, economy and culture.
Another, if less noticed explanation lies in logistics. The core of contributions to Tides are “donor-advised.” That is, they are held in abeyance until the donor (or donor’s estate) decides to spend the money. Through this arrangement, contributions can remain anonymous. There is nothing inherently illegal or immoral per se about this practice. It goes back a century or more. And today many nonprofit organizations, including National Legal and Policy Center, employ it. But Tides employs it in ways that might be skirting the law, especially when it creates private accounts. Some critics have called it legalized money laundering.
Under the heading, “How to Start a Donor Advised Fund,” the Tides website walks private donors through the steps of setting up a foundation – “complete our questionnaire; talk to us; complete an application; make an establishing gift; and start your giving journey.” Curiously, Schedule D, Part I (“Organizations Maintaining Donor Advised Funds or Other Similar Funds or Accounts”) of Tides’ Form 990 for 2022 (the most recent year available) is completely blank.
How do Tides and its partners benefit? Hayden Ludwig, formerly senior investigative researcher at the Capital Research Center and now director of policy research at Restoration of America, explains:
Tides Center’s primary function besides aiding left-leaning groups is “fiscal sponsorship.” This means using its nonprofit status as a legal umbrella for left-wing groups that have not or cannot apply for tax-exempt status with the IRS. The Tides Center does not directly fund these infant groups; instead, it operates as a feeder, accepting outside donations and redirecting them towards its numerous “projects” with the goal of developing them into standalone organizations.
Because these incubator organizations don’t qualify for nonprofit status, they don’t qualify for the accompanying tax breaks. But the Tides Center and its older sister organization, the Tides Foundation, do. This has been going on for a long while.
The Tides Foundation began in 1976 as the brainchild of Drummond Pike, the son of a successful San Francisco investment banker. Believing existing nonprofit organizations were insufficiently attuned to progressive causes, he started his own foundation, seeded by R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company heiress Jane Bagley Lehman (who would chair the foundation until her death in 1988). The foundation in short order became a go-to resource for the Left. Pike a few years later created a project, the Tides Center, to handle legal and accounting work, eventually spinning it off as a separate organization in 1996. Pike left Tides in 2010, but has remained highly active in progressive philanthropy.
Tides, led by current CEO Janiece Evans-Page, consists of five separate, and heavily overlapping, organizations:
Tides Network. This is the connector group, providing Tides affiliates with financial, legal, accounting, executive training and other administrative services.
Tides Foundation. Grantmaking is the primary activity here. The foundation matches donors with “social change leaders from communities historically denied power” and coordinates the movement of funds to the latter.
Tides Center. This functions as Tides’ central nervous system. In its own words, it offers “comprehensive fiscal sponsorship” services in addition to management, consulting and grantmaking.
Tides Converge. A “shared workspace” project, Tides Converge is a “diverse community of leaders and organizations” that holds events in San Francisco and New York City through two affiliates, respectively, Tides Inc. and Tides Two Rivers.
Tides Advocacy. This is an IRS 501(c)(4) nonprofit that raises funds for ostensibly eligible political activities.
However much these operations may differ, they all share a conviction that social justice requires a radical redistribution of money and power from predatory “haves” (especially if they’re white) to victimized “have nots.” The Tides Center website explains:
Tides Center is more than a fiscal sponsor – we’re a partner to mission-driven individuals and organizations working to advance social justice. Our fiscal sponsorship partnerships provide changemakers with a variety of options to fuel their work, whether they’re fundraising or a specific initiative or relying on our full infrastructure to run their organization.
Elsewhere on the site, Tides states: “We amplify the impact of our partners by providing philanthropic and capacity-building offerings centered in equity and justice.”
Individual projects likewise describe themselves with rainbow buzzwords. Tides’ Immigrants Belong Fund, possessed of open borders zeal, declares, “Tides Foundation’s Immigrants Belong (I-Belong) Fund promotes a pro-immigrant future by investing in the storytelling power of immigrant communities and proximate leaders at the forefront of community change.” The Healthy Democracy Fund is “committed to building a more inclusive democracy by shifting power to leaders and communities who have been historically excluded from participating in our nation’s future.”
Unfortunately, Tides organizations are fiscally equipped to handle these and other campaigns. According to their audited, consolidated IRS Form 990 for 2023, they held a combined $987.3 million in assets at the end of the year, way higher than the $112.6 million in liabilities. The respective 2022 figures were $1.43 billion and $171.6 million. This cushion gives Tides enormous leverage with clients – even when things don’t work out.
Consider Tides’ relationship with Black Lives Matter and the latter’s affiliated groups. This once-close partnership was forged several weeks into the multi-city rioting in the wake of the death of the sainted George Floyd. According to documents filed with the California Department of Justice, a nonprofit organization known as Thousand Currents transferred control of its Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation (GNF) account to the Tides Center on July 10, 2020. A corrupt offshoot of Black Lives Matter (see here, here and here), Black Lives Matter GNF received around $90 million in donations that year. Thousand Currents, for its part, is as radical as it gets. One of its board members in 2020 was Susan Rosenberg, a convicted Weather Underground domestic terrorist.
After several years, the BLM Global Network Foundation had grown unhappy. In May 2024, it sued the Tides Center in California state court, accusing the center of “egregiously mismanaging” over $33 million in donations. The Center issued a clarification that the disputed funds were intended for disbursal to a separate entity, BLM Grassroots. The suit remains active.
Tides found itself in the spotlight during this year’s Trump White House review of the now-cancelled U.S. Agency for International Development. Researchers discovered that nearly a decade ago, USAID had issued a $24.7 million grant to the Tides Center. Eventually, in 2020, Tides forwarded more than $12.6 million from its own Black Lives Matter Support Fund to BLM Grassroots following George Floyd’s death. While there is no apparent direct connection between the two transactions, it is indisputable that Tides’ credibility, influence and weight are enhanced when taxpayer funds are stirred into the same pot with those of billionaires who seek anonymity because of the controversial nature of the activities they underwrite.
Tides also has drawn plenty of funds from the State of California during the current governorship of Gavin Newsom, which began in January 2019. According to a probe published early this April by the Washington Free Beacon, as many as 18 state agencies during Newsom’s tenure had donated nearly $18 million to the Tides Center. While the state database lists grantor agencies, noted the article, it does not reveal which projects were funded.
If the destinations of Tides money are often shrouded, so are the origins. And that has much to do with the donor-advised funding model. By parking anonymous donations in separate accounts until the donor is ready to use them, Tides makes the identity of a donor almost impossible to trace. “Anonymity is very important to most of the people we work with,” admitted Drummond Pike a couple of decades ago. Those words are as true today as then. Its large donors, especially the Open Society Foundations, like it that way. And why not? Their mission and that of Tides are identical.
To cite one example, Tides has routed a portion of Open Society Foundation funds to domestic groups promoting Palestinian triumph and Israeli extinction (same difference). Here’s where some of that $13.7 million transferred from OSF to Tides during 2016-22 wound up: $710,000 to Adalah Justice Project, a pro-Palestinian group; $132,000 to the WESPAC Foundation, which sponsors Students for Justice in Palestine; $650,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace and $86,000 to IfNotNow (ifnotnowmovement.org), each of whom is opposed to Israeli “apartheid”; and $600,000 to the Mass Liberation Project, which seeks to end “mass incarceration and abolish the criminal legal system,” and which views Israel as a criminal nation.
These groups go far beyond standard liberal talking points. The Arizona chapter of the Mass Liberation Project, for instance, makes no secret about its revolutionary aims in the Middle East. “We unequivocally support Palestine’s demands and acknowledge Operation Al-Aqsa Flood as a necessary step to secure Palestine’s freedom,” the group’s website reads. “There are not two sides to genocide. As Palestinian people resist ethnic cleansing, they must have unwavering global support.”
Keep in mind that all this money was disbursed before the organized pro-Hamas occupations of city streets and university campuses across America that began a year ago.
More recently, the Open Society Foundation in 2023 awarded two grants to Tides, one for $125,000 and the other for $1 million, to a community action project in Puerto Rico called the Maria Fund. Named after the destructive hurricane that struck the island in 2017 (which the group blames on “deep inequities rooted in centuries of colonialism and decades of neoliberal policies”), the organization’s rhetoric bursts with the spirit of rainbow Leftism, with the usual aggression, sentimentality, and mission statement gobbledygook. “We share a vision of a strong social justice ecosystem that builds power for organizations and their constituents, drives structural change, and advances justice and dignity for Puerto Rico,” the Maria Fund declares. “This vision is more urgent than ever before. The groups we support face constant threats for their very existence.” The site also summarizes its current practices, one of which is “Distribute resources to organizations committed to long-term change, particularly those led by historically marginalized communities – including Black, trans, queer, youth, and rural organizations.” Need one go on?
It’s ironic, by the way, that for a group so ferociously devoted to advancing Puerto Rican interests, the Maria Fund is housed at a mainland address: 1014 Torney Avenue, San Francisco, CA 94129. That’s also Tides Center headquarters. Small world!
The Tides Network may be the world’s most powerful financial intermediary on behalf of radicalism. As a manager and creator of private donor accounts, it is indispensable to the Left’s play for power. This is less about philanthropy than politics. Its arrangements, even if legal, qualify as shady. Tides’ tax-exempt status – and that of the Open Society Foundations – should be scrutinized accordingly.
Carl F. Horowitz is an NLPC senior fellow.
