The main political nonprofit groups tied to the 2024 presidential candidates raised almost $900 million last year from donors whose identities remain secret, revealing the extraordinary scope of a shadow campaign-finance system in modern contests for the White House.
Future Forward USA Action, the so-called dark-money group of the main super PAC backing Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris, took in a staggering $613 million from donors last year, according to a tax filing obtained by The New York Times. About $252 million of that money flowed into the candidates’ main super PAC, called FF PAC.
Strikingly, $515 million of the $613 million raised overall came from just the 10 largest donations, the biggest of which was for $97.5 million from an unidentified person or group.
Mr. Trump’s main nonprofit group, Securing American Greatness, collected about $275 million from donors in 2024, according to a separate filing obtained by The Times. Nearly $68 million of that headed to the nonprofit group’s affiliated super PACs.
The largest donation to Securing American Greatness was for $35 million from an unidentified giver. Its top 10 donations accounted for $163 million of its $275 million.
The filings show starkly how much the main Democratic super PAC leaned on its dark-money group, reflecting one way that the left has raced ahead of the right in campaign finance. Befitting the difference in scale between the two operations, the Democratic nonprofit group’s 2024 tax filing has twice as many pages as its Republican counterpart’s.
Despite the gargantuan sums, the donors to these nonprofit groups will almost certainly never be revealed. Unlike campaigns and super PACs, which must routinely disclose their donors in filings to the Federal Election Commission, nonprofit groups can keep their sources of funding hidden.
The role of these political nonprofit organizations — listed under section 501(c)(4) of the tax code and sometimes called dark-money groups — has flown under the radar, but has grown increasingly important.
Tiffany Muller, who runs End Citizens United, an advocacy group opposed to the role of big money in politics, estimated that only about 25 percent of the money spent by outside groups in elections could now be traced back to its true source.
“This is a problem on both sides of the aisle,” she said. “All of these different vehicles skirt the original intent of the campaign finance laws, both in terms of limits and in terms of disclosure.”
The traditional downside of supporting candidates through nonprofit groups was that the nonprofits are legally limited in the amount of direct campaigning they can do. But it has become increasingly common for these groups to funnel almost half of the money they receive into sibling super PACs, which face no such restrictions on campaigning.
The super PACs then disclose only the donations from their nonprofit arms — not from the underlying donors to those nonprofits. The cash involved is sometimes known as “gray money.”
Election lawyers say it can raise legal questions if a super PAC intentionally skirts disclosure rules by using a nonprofit group as a pass-through entity for a donor’s intended super PAC contribution.
Steve Roberts, a Republican campaign finance lawyer, said operatives could not route a donor’s money to a super PAC through nonprofits with “an explicit earmarking, or essentially a tacit understanding, that that’s the purpose for which they’ll be used.”
But in aggregate, the same operatives often run both the nonprofit and the super PAC, and some of the money is fungible.
Future Forward’s nonprofit group actually raised about $112 million more than its super PAC did over the course of 2023 and 2024.
While tax filings for nonprofit groups do not identify contributors, some donors to the Future Forward nonprofit have become public. For example, George and Alex Soros’s philanthropic organization voluntarily revealed that it gave $3 million last year to the group. And The Times has also previously reported on major donations to the Future Forward nonprofit from Bill Gates and Michael Bloomberg, who each pledged $50 million.
“Future Forward took our donors’ trust seriously and invested efficiently in programs that would have an impact,” said Chauncey McLean, the leader of Future Forward.
Mr. Trump’s main super PAC capitalized on the same trend, to a lesser degree, during his successful 2024 campaign.
Unlike Future Forward’s nonprofit, which has been active since the 2018 election cycle, Mr. Trump’s allied nonprofit group, Securing American Greatness, was formed only in the middle of 2024.
Of the nearly $68 million that Securing American Greatness gave to Mr. Trump’s super PACs, it sent nearly $53 million to MAGA Inc., Mr. Trump’s main super PAC, and $15 million to a spinoff super PAC funded entirely by Securing American Greatness to attack Robert F. Kennedy Jr. when he was still running as an independent candidate.
Securing American Greatness ended 2024 flush with $83.6 million in assets, according to the filing. The group declined to comment.
Mr. Trump’s main super PACs were not nearly as reliant on their allied nonprofit group as the Democratic super PAC was. Over 2023 and 2024, the Trump super PACs took in about $392 million, including money raised in November and December 2024 after the election concluded. Only about 17 percent of that money came from their own nonprofit group.
Mr. Trump also drew support in 2024 from a wider range of super PACs, which were funded by individual donors like Miriam Adelson and Elon Musk and do not appear to be heavily backed by “gray money” from nonprofit groups.
Securing American Greatness’s tax filing also reveals that Mr. Trump’s nonprofit group sent $30 million to other dark-money organizations, including $15 million to an entity called the Lawfare Defense Fund Inc. That nonprofit was created in April 2024 and has no public profile, but its directors include two prominent Republican donors, John Paulson and Pepe Fanjul.
Securing American Greatness also gave $10.4 million to Send the Vote Inc., an organization formed in May 2024 that focused on voter turnout among young men and was promoted by the online personalities Theo Von and the Nelk Boys, whom the Trump campaign courted heavily.
Securing American Greatness also spent $92.6 million on its paid advertising campaign to support Mr. Trump’s platform, the filing says.
All told, the two MAGA Inc. super PACs and their aligned nonprofit collected just under $600 million over the 2024 cycle, according to a Times analysis of F.E.C. and tax filings.
By comparison, the Future Forward super PAC and its allied nonprofit group raised about $973 million over the cycle, according to the analysis.
That huge sum is a big reason that Future Forward has become ensnared in Democrats’ second-guessing after their 2024 defeat, including from former staff members on Ms. Harris’s campaign. Known for its almost religious belief in data and analytics, the group was seen by some liberals as holding too much power among Democratic donors and as insufficiently supportive of less-well-funded progressive groups.
The group said it had given about $217 million to other liberal nonprofit groups in 2024, including roughly $53 million to two affiliated with America Votes, which is aligned with the Democratic agenda. Future Forward said its nonprofit group itself also spent about $100 million in 2024 on its own pro-Democrat advertising, separate from the barrage of ads run by its super PAC.
As part of the post-election debate, some Democrats have wondered whether the Future Forward nonprofit group left any money on the table that could have been used to help the party more. The tax filing shows that the nonprofit ended 2024 with $26.7 million on hand, but an aide to the group said that this leftover money was ineligible to be used for electoral purposes.
The total amount raised by all Future Forward entities is not knowable because the group also quietly maintained a nonpolitical 501(c)(3) arm called the Future Forward Education Fund. Because of how that entity is organized, it is not required to file its own tax return. But the education fund had planned to spend $85 million to $150 million in 2024, according to a document previously reviewed by The Times.
Future Forward declined to say how much it raised into its education fund.
Theodore Schleifer is a Times reporter covering billionaires and their impact on the world.
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