The Soros–Tides–Arabella Pipeline: How Charitable Dollars Reached a Federal Super PAC

Between 2016 and 2024, the George Soros foundations and Tides network entities documented in prior reporting at this site — the same organizations whose charitable assets funded groups that endorsed Zohran Mamdani for Mayor of New York City — sent money through four documented routes to the Arabella Advisors network’s Sixteen Thirty Fund (501(c)(4)), a Washington D.C. political organization that reported $453.7 million in political campaign expenditures across fifteen entity-years.

Foundation to Promote Open Society and Open Society Institute, George Soros’s private charitable foundations, funded the Arabella charities that fed the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)), which received $11,680,550 from those same Soros foundations in TY2023 and TY2024, gave $842,000 directly to the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Open Society Policy Center (501(c)(4)) gave $68.2 million directly. And Tides Advocacy — the political arm already documented as the conversion point for $24 million in charitable-to-political transfers in the Mamdani network — funded the Sixteen Thirty Fund too.

Those two political funds, in turn, supplied 58.6 percent of one federal super PAC’s itemized receipts — a committee that spent $12,718,076 on independent expenditures supporting the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. The trail begins with tax-deductible charitable contributions and ends in a presidential election.

When a 501(c)(3) charitable organization — whose donors receive federal tax deductions — transfers assets to a 501(c)(4) political organization that then deploys them in political campaign activity, tax-deductible charitable dollars have been converted into political campaign spending. The four routes documented here raise that question at a scale far beyond the Mamdani network alone: $389,148,524 in charitable-network dollars reaching political arms that reported $453,729,094 in political campaign expenditures across fifteen entity-years — including the 2024 presidential-year spending traced above. The Sixteen Thirty Fund and its sibling North Fund supplied 58.6 percent of that super PAC’s itemized receipts (excluding memo-coded rows).

Their own filings document every step.

The Charitable-to-Political Conversion, in Five Steps

Federal tax law draws a sharp line between charitable organizations and political ones. A 501(c)(3) organization — a public charity or private foundation — may accept tax-deductible contributions. Its donors receive a federal tax benefit on the premise that their money serves charitable purposes. In exchange, the 501(c)(3) is absolutely prohibited from intervening in political campaigns. A 501(c)(4) organization may engage in political campaign activity; its donors receive no tax deduction. When a 501(c)(3) transfers money to a 501(c)(4) that then deploys it in political campaign activity, tax-deductible charitable dollars have been converted into political campaign spending. The donor who funded the 501(c)(3) received a federal subsidy. The money ended up in a political operation. That conversion is what the evidence in this article documents — at every step, on the organizations’ own federal returns.

Step 1 — The charitable source. Foundation to Promote Open Society and Open Society Institute — George Soros’s private foundations organized as 501(c)(3)s — make grants to other 501(c)(3) organizations. Their donors receive federal tax deductions. The foundations are barred from political campaign intervention.

Step 2 — The first transfer. Those Soros 501(c)(3) foundations grant money to Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)) and to the Arabella network’s charitable funds — New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund — all 501(c)(3)s. Still charitable. Still tax-deductible at the source.

Step 3 — Crossing the line. Tides Foundation and the Arabella charities grant that money to the Sixteen Thirty Fund and North Fund — both 501(c)(4) political organizations. This is the conversion point. Tax-deductible charitable assets move into political arms. The grants are coded on the grantor’s own Schedule I with the recipient’s “501(c)(4)” status.

Step 4 — The political deployment. The Sixteen Thirty Fund and North Fund deploy the money. Their Schedule C returns report $453,729,094 in political campaign expenditures across fifteen entity-years. In 2024 alone: $78,008,755 from the Sixteen Thirty Fund and $18,405,128 from North Fund — which reports zero employees. A 501(c)(3) charity supplies its entire workforce.

Step 5 — The candidate-directed expenditure. The Sixteen Thirty Fund and North Fund contribute $12,430,364 to Your Community PAC during the 2024 presidential campaign — part of $13,739,642 the two funds contribute in total, 58.6 percent of that committee’s itemized receipts, excluding memo-coded attribution rows ($13,739,642 of $23,449,005). The super PAC spends $19,799,415 on independent expenditures naming federal candidates, including $12,718,076 supporting the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee.

Every step is documented on the relevant organization’s own federal filing. No step requires inference. The question the documents raise — whether charitable assets were improperly converted into political campaign spending — is for the Internal Revenue Service to resolve.

A principle that runs through federal tax law governs the analysis: substance over form. What an arrangement is determines its legal character, not what it is labeled. The labels here say separately incorporated charitable funds, arms-length grants for “nonpartisan” purposes, and intermediary transfers that are individually permissible. The substance, documented on those same filings, is tax-deductible charitable contributions moving step by step through intermediary organizations — each transfer coded on the grantor’s own return — into political campaign activity supporting specific federal candidates in a presidential election year. Whether the substance survives the form is a determination for the Service.

What the 2024 Returns Show

In tax year 2024, the Arabella network’s three 501(c)(3) charitable funds — New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, and Windward Fund — transferred a combined $68,228,989 directly to the Sixteen Thirty Fund, the second largest single-year total in the entire nine-year record:

• New Venture Fund → Sixteen Thirty Fund: $58,932,923
• Hopewell Fund → Sixteen Thirty Fund: $8,296,066
• Windward Fund → Sixteen Thirty Fund: $1,000,000

In that same year, Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)) — which received $11,680,550 from Soros-affiliated foundations in TY2023 and TY2024 — made a direct grant of $650,000 to the Sixteen Thirty Fund. Purpose stated on Tides Foundation’s own Schedule I: “equity, human rights, and economic empowerment.”

In that same year, the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $78,008,755 in political campaign expenditures on its Schedule C and contributed $6,730,364 to Your Community PAC (as recorded on the PAC’s FEC receipts, including $35,364 in in-kind support; the cash grant reported on the fund’s own Schedule C is $6,695,000). North Fund contributed an additional $5,700,000 to the same committee and reported $18,405,128 in political campaign expenditures of its own — with zero employees.

The Arabella charities that funded the Sixteen Thirty Fund in 2024 were themselves funded, in prior and current years, by Foundation to Promote Open Society and Open Society Institute — the Soros private foundations documented in prior reporting as the upstream source of the charitable-to-political conversion chain in the Mamdani network investigation.

The chain from Soros foundations to the 2024 presidential campaign is documented at every step on the organizations’ own federal filings.

Four Routes — All on the Returns

The Soros-affiliated entities and Tides network intermediaries documented in prior submissions sent money toward the Sixteen Thirty Fund through four documented routes. Each appears on the grantor’s own Schedule I.

Route A — Open Society Policy Center directly to the Sixteen Thirty Fund: $68,150,000

Open Society Policy Center / Open Society Action Fund (501(c)(4), EIN 52-2028955) — already documented as a Soros-affiliated political organization in prior submissions — made direct grants to the Sixteen Thirty Fund across five years.

These are 501(c)(4)-to-501(c)(4) transfers — not charitable-to-political conversions in the technical sense. What they establish is that the Open Society Policy Center — the same entity that received and deployed charitable assets within the Mamdani network — was simultaneously a direct funder of the Sixteen Thirty Fund at $68.2 million over five years, including $4,150,000 in the 2024 presidential election year.

Route B — Tides Foundation directly to the Sixteen Thirty Fund: $842,000

This is the route that crosses the charitable-to-political line most directly.

Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)) — which received $11,680,550 from Soros-affiliated foundations (FPOS and OSI) in TY2023 and TY2024 — made direct grants from its own charitable assets to the Sixteen Thirty Fund (501(c)(4)):

The TY2024 grant of $650,000 is the largest of the three and occurs in the presidential election year — the same year the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $78,008,755 in political campaign expenditures and contributed $6,730,364 to the super PAC that spent $12,718,076 supporting the Democratic presidential nominee.

A 501(c)(3) charitable organization whose donors received federal tax deductions transferred $842,000 directly to a 501(c)(4) that deployed tens of millions of dollars in political campaign activity in that same year. The stated purpose on the grant: “equity, human rights, and economic empowerment.” The purpose the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported on its Schedule C: political campaign expenditures of $78,008,755.

The upstream is what makes this Soros money rather than merely Tides money. The $842,000 did not originate with Tides Foundation. In TY2023 and TY2024, the Tides Foundation and Tides Center received $11,680,550 in grants from George Soros’s two private 501(c)(3) foundations — Foundation to Promote Open Society and Open Society Institute — documented on the foundations’ own Form 990-PF and Form 990 returns. Those are the same two Soros foundations that, on a separate path, granted $92,465,850 directly to the Arabella charities in Route C below. Whether the dollars crossed into the Sixteen Thirty Fund through Tides or through Arabella, they trace back to the same charitable source.

Route C — FPOS and OSI → Arabella Charities → Sixteen Thirty Fund: $343,967,196

Route C is the largest and most structurally significant. It requires two steps.

Step 1: Foundation to Promote Open Society (501(c)(3)) and Open Society Institute (501(c)(3)) — George Soros’s private charitable foundations — made direct grants to the Arabella network’s own 501(c)(3) charitable funds, totaling $92,465,850 across verified tax years:

The grant purposes on FPOS’s own 990-PF returns are worth reading directly. In TY2020: $10,000,000 to New Venture Fund “to support the Grantee’s nonpartisan Safe Voting Fund, which seeks to ensure that all eligible voters are able to cast a ballot in a safe and secure manner in November 2020.” In TY2023: $10,000,000 to Hopewell Fund “to support the nonpartisan Free Election Fund.” These purposes are on the face of sworn federal returns. What the Arabella charities did with the money is on the face of their own Schedule I.

Step 2: The Arabella charities transferred $343,967,196 to the Sixteen Thirty Fund across tax years 2016–2024, documented on each grantor’s own Schedule I. In 2024 alone — the presidential election year — the combined transfer was $68,228,989:

Route D — Tides Advocacy directly to the Sixteen Thirty Fund: $4,169,700

Tides Advocacy (501(c)(4)) — the political arm of the Tides network documented as the conversion point for $24,201,040 in charitable-to-political transfers in the Mamdani network investigation — made direct grants to the Sixteen Thirty Fund in TY2020 ($4,112,700) and TY2021 ($57,000). Total: $4,169,700. Tides Advocacy itself received $71,016,161 from Tides Foundation (501(c)(3)) and Tides Center (501(c)(3)) across the years documented in prior submissions.

The Complete 2024 Chain

For the 2024 presidential election year, the documentation runs end-to-end from Soros foundation returns to FEC filings:

The super PAC’s independent expenditures named ten federal candidates — four Democrats and one independent supported, five Republicans opposed:

The $19.8 million total includes 2024 expenditures and a smaller 2025 Tennessee House-race component reported in the raw FEC Schedule E data.

No assertion is made that any specific charitable dollar paid for any specific advertisement. What the filings establish is that the Soros foundations funded the Arabella charities, the Arabella charities funded the Sixteen Thirty Fund, and the Sixteen Thirty Fund and North Fund supplied $13,739,642, or 58.6 percent, of Your Community PAC’s itemized receipts (excluding memo-coded rows). Every link is on the organizations’ own federal returns or FEC filings.

Why 2020 Still Matters

Tax year 2024 is the central story. But 2020 establishes that 2024 was not a one-time event — it was a recurring structure operating across multiple election cycles.

In TY2020, New Venture Fund sent $86,234,295 to the Sixteen Thirty Fund in a single year. The Sixteen Thirty Fund reported $167,053,525 in political campaign expenditures that year — with zero employees, its books kept by a for-profit consulting firm, and its entire workforce supplied by New Venture Fund, the same 501(c)(3) charity that was simultaneously its largest funder.

Of the $163,825,683 in political transfers the Sixteen Thirty Fund reported in TY2020, $110,559,183 was not itemized by recipient on the face of the Schedule C. Across the fifteen entity-years, $295,013,415 in political transfers reported in aggregate was never broken out by recipient name.

The structure that operated in 2020 operated again in 2024. The upstream funders are the same. The intermediaries are the same. The downstream destination is the same. What changed is the election.

Two Investigations, One Upstream Source

The Mamdani network investigation and the Arabella network investigation are separate claims supported by separate evidentiary records. The Mamdani network investigation documents $24,201,040 in charitable-to-political transfers funding organizations that endorsed the Mayor of New York City. The Arabella investigation documents $389,148,524 in charitable-to-political transfers funding political arms that spent $453.7 million on political campaign activity nationally, including during the 2024 presidential election.

What the evidence presented here establishes is that the same upstream entities funded both. The same Soros foundations. The same Tides network intermediaries. The money moved in different directions toward different political operations, but it originated in the same place — tax-deductible charitable contributions to private foundations and public charities whose donors were told their money would be used for charitable purposes.

The federal returns document what it was actually used for.

I have filed whistleblower complaints with the Internal Revenue Service documenting both networks, with the underlying figures traced to primary-source filings. The IRS is the body that decides what the law makes of the conduct; this article makes no such finding. It reports what the documents say.

Sources

Every figure in this article derives from the named organization’s own federal filing, verified against IRS e-filed XML primary-source returns. Grant transfers are taken from each grantor’s Form 990 Schedule I or Form 990-PF Part XV (paid-during-year basis); political-campaign expenditures from the recipient funds’ Form 990 Schedule C; and the federal political spending from the committee’s FEC Schedule A (receipts) and Schedule E (independent expenditures). Each organization’s returns can be read in full at the links below.

Public charity public-support determinations are taken from each filer’s Form 990 Schedule A. Where a grant total spans multiple years, it is the sum of the amounts reported on the grantor’s Schedule I across the tax years stated in the relevant table. All EINs above can also be searched directly on the IRS Tax Exempt Organization Search and the IRS e-file XML release.

Public Record Disclaimer: All findings in this article are based on publicly available records, including IRS Form 990 and Form 990-PF filings verified from IRS e-filed XML primary source returns, and Federal Election Commission disclosures. This analysis reflects a good-faith review of documentary evidence on matters of public concern.

Written by Sam Antar | Forensic Accountant/Fraud Investigator

For updates on this investigation, follow @SamAntar on X.

© 2026 Sam E. Antar. All rights reserved.