The chair of the top tax-writing committee, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.), sent a letter Monday to Chamber President and CEO Suzanne Clark and U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation President Carolyn Cawley requesting information on donations from the Tides Foundation.
The nonprofit has received funding from Open Society Foundations, another nonprofit founded by the billionaire Democratic megadonor George Soros, a frequent target of conspiracy theories and the political right.
The Tides Foundation gave more than $12 million to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation between 2018 and 2022 for purposes including “economic development,” “project support” and “equality, human rights and economic empowerment,” according to tax records first reported by the right-wing outlet Breitbart.
But Eric Eversole, president of the Hiring Our Heroes program at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation, said the Breitbart report, which alleged the Chamber was turning to “to Soros-Funded groups and Democrats to keep dwindling operations alive,” was “inaccurate.”
“The Tides Foundation operates a donor advised fund, through which corporations and individuals make charitable donations. The funds received by the Chamber Foundation were charitable contributions from corporations made to the donor advised fund,” Eversole told The Hill.
Donor-advised funds allow an individual or company to give money to one nonprofit and direct those funds as grants to other nonprofits, making it difficult, if not impossible, to draw a direct line from an individual donor to a grant for a specific organization through a donor-advised fund.
That’s especially true for a nonprofit as large as the Tides Foundation, which reported raising $573.7 million and paying out $667 million in grants in 2022, according to its most recent Form 990.
“The issue you raise is exactly which donors funded these operations through the Tides Foundation and for what purpose. That’s a question the House Ways and Means Committee is investigating,” a Breitbart News spokesperson told The Hill when asked for comment on their reporting on the ultimate source of donor-advised funds.
Citing the Breitbart report, Smith said in his Monday letter that the Tides Foundation “partners with and sponsors several anti-business organizations” that appear to conflict with the Chamber’s mission to support small businesses.
The Republican chair also raised questions about the business lobbying giant’s tax-exempt status and wrote, “the Committee is concerned about whether donors to, and members of, organizations like yours have sufficient awareness of how their money is being spent.”
Eversole said the funds were used for the Hiring Our Heroes program, which launched in 2011 to connect the military community with American businesses, as well as “smaller programs focused on workforce development.”
The Chamber has until May 20 to answer questions on how the Tides Foundation funds have been used, its decision to accepts funds from the Tides Foundation and what “taxpayers getting in return for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Foundation’s tax-exempt status.”
The Hill’s Taylor Giorno has more here.
