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Comment by kodah | Hacker News Reader

> The Tides Foundation is a major center-left grantmaking organization and a major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits.

The fact that they declare themselves center-left is not a violation of 501(c)(3)?

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What you're quoting is InfluenceWatch's description of the Tides Foundation, not their description of themselves. Their own description (from their About page) is "Tides is a philanthropic partner and nonprofit accelerator dedicated to building a world of shared prosperity and social justice."

IANAL but declaring a political leaning is not the same as supporting a candidate for public office. Many, many political 527s have an associated 501(c)3 or (c)4 to handle donations for their charitable work, like the obviously left-leaning MoveOn.org.

I forget the precise rules on political activity, but when the IRS investigated what was (blatent, IIRC) violations of it by right-wing organizations several years ago, the right and GOP pointed their propaganda cannons at the IRS and its head, a non-partisan public servant, making it clear that such rules were not to be enforced (and the rule of law is inferior to the GOP).

Would you please share some links to more info about this?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IRS_targeting_controversy#:~:t....

It should be easy to find plenty, but here is one from the end of the saga:

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/05/us/politics/irs-targeting...

No? What provision do you think are they violating?

Why would it be?

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