In November 2024 George Soros’ Open Society Foundations (OSF) updated its online grants database to include grants from 2023. This nearly-year-old delayed reporting is common with nonprofits.
The online database gives details of 19,737 grants that total over $7.2 billion from 2016 through 2023. There were 2160 grants in 2023 that totaled about $1.1 billion.
This online database contains self-reported information also filed in IRS 990 tax filings, but without all the information available in the tax filings. Extracting the additional information from the tax filings is a huge task, so analysis from the online database is the most expedient approach.
The word cloud below hints at the Soros-sponsored progressive causes based on the grant descriptions in 2023:
Four things to know
1. Soros’ nonprofits spent big on election-related activities.
Based on keywords “voter”, “voting”, and “civic engagement,” Soros’ nonprofits in 2023 funded more than 65 grants totaling over $85 million for involvement in election-related activities. [This is a low estimate based on only these three keywords.]
Shown below are 26 of these grants that were for $750,000 or more.
2. Soros’ nonprofits sponsor certain Arabella Advisors “dark money” funds.
Instead of funding some projects directly, Soros’ nonprofits send grants to “dark money” progressive nonprofits managed by the Arabella Advisors.
In 2023 Soros’ nonprofits sent 27 grants totaling over $43 million to Arabella Advisors’ funds to obfuscate the source of the funding: New Venture Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Hopewell Fund, North Fund, and Windward Fund.
Descriptions in the Soros grants database identify the grantee’s intended projects in some cases:
- Free Election Fund ($10 million to Hopewell Fund)
- Social and Economic Strategy Center ($10.9 million to New Venture Fund)
- Center for Secure and Modern Elections’ Cities Forward initiative ($1.25 million to New Venture Fund)
- Heartland Fund ($500,000 to Windward Fund)
But the $43 million from Soros was only a drop in the bucket of the $1.5 billion spent by Arabella Advisors funds in 2023.
 | Dark money: Arabella Advisors spent nearly $1.5 billion in 2023 mostly on progressive causesEARL F GLYNN·DECEMBER 23, 2024Read full story |
3. Soros’ nonprofits send funds to other progressive “dark money” and philanthropic nonprofits.
- $13.5 million in 18 grants to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors with $2 million for “Office of American Possibilities, to further develop their Welcome.US initiative and engage the American people in the resettlement of refugees and other displaced persons.”
- $12 million in 12 grants to Tides Advocacy, Tides Center, or Tides Foundation. $1.05 million was for “social welfare activities in Michigan” and $750,000 was for “nonpartisan civic engagement in Texas.”
- $6 million in 8 grants to NEO Philanthropy of which $1.5 million was for the “State Infrastructure Fund Voting Rights Working Group, which works to advance voting rights and prevent discriminatory voting practices through litigation.”
- $1.6 million in 5 grants to Proteus Fund of which $915,000 was (ironically) “to support the Transparency and Accountability Initiative donor collaborative, a fiscally-sponsored project of the grantee, to assist its members to strengthen the impact and effectiveness of their transparency and accountability funding, and the movement as a whole.”
4. Obfuscation and indirection in grants to Kansas nonprofits
No Kansas nonprofit can be found in a computer search of the 2023 OSF IRS 990 PDF files or online grants database.
The only known direct OSF grant to a Kansas nonprofit was a $50,000 grant to the Kansas Appleseed Center for Law and Justice in Lawrence in 2018.
While direct Kansas links cannot be found in the 2023 OSF data, Soros’ nonprofits are large donors to the Arabella Advisors’ funds, which do give to Kansas nonprofits.
 | Over $3.5 million in Arabella nonprofit dark money flowed to Kansas in 2023EARL F GLYNN·DECEMBER 20, 2024Read full story |
A more direct link from the Soros’ nonprofits to Kansas can be made via the Rural Democracy Initiative.
“Dark money” is often about obfuscation and indirection:
In 2020 Soros’ Open Society Policy Center nonprofit gave $2 million to the Arabella Advisors Sixteen Thirty Fund with the purpose “to support the Rural Victory Fund…”
In 2023 Soros’ Foundation to Promote Open Society gave $500,000 to the Arabella Windward Fund for the purpose “to support the grantee’s Heartland Fund.”
The Arabella Advisors started the “Rural Democracy Initiative,” which is their name for two of their “fiscally sponsored” projects, Heartland Fund and Rural Victory Fund.
Legally, the Heartland Fund is part of the Arabella Windward Fund, and the Rural Democracy Fund is part of the Arabella Sixteen Thirty Fund.
Grants from Soros’s nonprofits fund the Rural Democracy Initiative, but there are likely other donors, too.
In 2023 three Kansas nonprofits received $150K in funding from the Rural Democracy Initiative’s Heartland Fund via the Arabella Advisors Windward Fund:
- Kansas Interfaith Action,
- Loud Light, and
- Neighboring Movement.
 | Rural Democracy Initiative spent $200,000 in Kansas in 2023 from “dark money” Arabella Advisors’ fundsEARL F GLYNN·APRIL 3, 2024Read full story |
Soros’ nonprofits by the numbers
The online database shows the five nonprofits Soros used to channel funding to progressive organizations worldwide.
Two nonprofits present in the 2022 filings are not part of the 2023 reporting.
The Fund for Policy Reform Trust has only been used in 2020 and 2022. The Open Society Policy Center was been renamed to be the Open Society Action Fund.
Grant trends
The number of grants in 2023 was up about 9% over 2022 (2160 vs 1979).
While grant counts were up, the total amounts were down in 2023.
The total amount of the 2160 grants in 2023 was $1.093 billion, which was down nearly 24% from the $1.431 billion in 2022.
Much of this reduction was caused by much less spending globally. See below.
However, with grant counts up and amounts down, the median amount of each grant was higher.
The median grant amount has increased by $50,000 per year for each year 2021, 2022 and 2023.
Regions
There are seven broad geographic regions where we work. The region associated with a grant reflects the geographic area served by the grant and not necessarily where the grantee is based. Open Society Foundations, About Our Awarded Grants.
At least 485 of the OSF grants totaling $352 million were given to nonprofits in the United States. It’s unclear what part of the 599 global grants that totaled $323 million also flowed to the US.
In 2023 the number of global grants was up 70% (599 up from 352 in 2022), but the total global grant amount was down 61% ($323 million down from $826 million in 2022).
List of Grant Recipients
Download an Excel file with details of the 2166 grants to 1605 grantees in 2023:
 | Open Society Foundations Grantees 2023 […227KB ∙ XLSX file |
| Worksheets: Alphabetical, Descending Amount | |
| Download | |
Related
 | Biden presented Presidential Medals of Freedom to George Soros, Hillary Clinton, and othersEARL F GLYNN·JAN 4Read full story |
Check online for revisions and updates.
Earl Glynn – Watchdog Lab
Earl F. Glynn is a mostly-retired data scientist, scientific programmer, software engineer and physical scientist living in the Kansas City metro area, and the publisher of the substack Watchdog Lab.
