In its own telling, Science Moms is a “nonpartisan group of scientists” working to fight climate change . Science Moms is spending $2.5 million on a new advertising campaign about “unnatural disasters” in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Arizona, and other swing states until Sept. 30 in the lead-up to the November elections.
“If you knew this was your last, best chance to protect all the places you love, what would you do?” says a narrator in the ad, which is called “Climate change is taking the places we love.”
But while Science Moms appears to position itself as apolitical and grassroots, it actually shares a connection to Arabella Advisors, a consulting firm that doubles as the largest Democratic-aligned dark money network in the United States. Science Moms is not a stand-alone entity. Rather, it’s an initiative of the Potential Energy Coalition, a former project of an Arabella-managed dark money group called the Windward Fund, tax records show. The Windward Fund, which finances the Potential Energy Coalition, is bankrolled by the likes of George Soros, Bill Gates , Mark Zuckerberg, and other billionaires.
The relationship between the Windward Fund in Washington, D.C., and Science Moms illustrates how complex tax laws serve to obscure where nonprofit organizations often derive their assets. Arabella has long argued that it merely provides administrative, human resources, and accounting services to independently run groups, though its billion-dollar network is, in many ways, unique due to its scope and sprawling usage of fiscal sponsorship . This legal arrangement allows Arabella-linked projects to shield their backers from the IRS, which does not require sponsored projects to submit separate financial disclosures.
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