What, Exactly, Just Happened to the Left’s Dark Money Behemoth Arabella Advisors?

Arabella Advisors, a for-profit company that managed services for many influential dark money nonprofits on the Left, is no more—or so it seems.

Sunflower Services, a new public benefit corporation, announced on Monday that it would be acquiring “Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship servicing business.” Meanwhile, Arabella’s former CEO, Himesh Bhise, announced that he would lead a supposedly new company, Vital Impact.

A Nov. 19 email to Arabella Advisors received an automated response stating, “As of November 17, 2025 Arabella Advisors has ceased operations.”

What, exactly, is Sunflower Services? Well, it’s a completely new company financed by… lead investor New Venture Fund, with financial support from the Windward and Hopewell Funds.

These names should be familiar to longtime observers of Arabella Advisors. New Venture Fund, Windward Fund, and Hopewell Fund are three of the “seven sisters” dark money nonprofits that received services from Arabella. These are the nonprofits organized under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

These groups acted as “fiscal sponsors,” housing various quasi-independent projects that did not register as separate entities. Critics say this system allows donors to fund activist projects through the nonprofits—cloaking what their dollars are actually paying for. These groups funded many of the left-wing activist groups that fed staff and ideas into the Biden administration, particularly pushing climate alarmism. The Open Society Foundations, founded by Hungarian American billionaire George Soros and now run by his son, Alex, has contributed millions to the nonprofits who were Arabella’s clients.

The other nonprofits—Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund—more politically active groups organized under Section 501(c)(4), were notably absent from the Sunflower Services press release.

Vital Impact told The Daily Signal that “none” of these nonprofits “will be clients of Vital Impact.”

“Arabella Advisors’ fiscal sponsorship business, including its existing infrastructure and operations team, was acquired by Sunflower Services, which is unrelated to Vital Impact,” Vital Impact said in a statement Tuesday. “Vital Impact is a new, nonpartisan professional services firm focused on strategy, operations, and technology support for the social sector.”

According to The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Sunflower Services will absorb roughly 243 staff from Arabella Advisors, which had 425 employees in 2023. It remains unclear how many staff will move to Vital Impact.

The Gates Foundation dealt a major blow to Arabella Advisors earlier this year, ending its longstanding partnership with the for-profit company.

Elias Law Group, which previously represented Arabella Advisors, did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment as to whether it still represents the nonprofits, or Sunflower Services or Vital Impact.

What Is Vital Impact?

Caitlin Sutherland, executive director of Americans for Public Trust, directed The Daily Signal to a document that might shed light on the relationship between Arabella Advisors and Vital Impact.

On Monday, Arabella Advisors filed “Articles of Amendment” with the Virginia State Corporation Commission, seeking a “Name Change” to “Vital Impact.” In the Virginia system, the same entity (Number S1572793) merely altered the name from Arabella Advisors to Vital Impact.

“What will Vital Impact be doing and how is it different from what Arabella Advisors was doing?” Sutherland asked.

When asked about this document, Vital Impact repeated the claim that it is a new firm.

“This is a straightforward administrative point,” the company told The Daily Signal. “The legal entity formerly known as Arabella Advisors, LLC filed a name change following the sale of its fiscal sponsorship services business — long associated with Arabella Advisors — to Sunflower Services.”

“Vital Impact is a new, nonpartisan firm built from the business assets acquired over the past several years — including Redstone Strategy Group, Kiwi Partners, and Ribbon Technology,” the company added. “These teams now operate together as Vital Impact, completely separate from the fiscal sponsorship services business purchased by Sunflower Services.”

The Funds Respond

The 501(c)(3) nonprofits that previously worked with Arabella each praised Sunflower Services.

“New Venture Fund is proud to serve as lead investor in Sunflower Services because we see it as a strategic opportunity to strengthen the entire social impact ecosystem,” the fund told The Daily Signal Wednesday. “The Public Benefit Corporation structure ensures that Sunflower’s success is directly tied to the success of the organizations it supports. Because Sunflower is owned by nonprofits, the work remains deeply mission-aligned, ensuring that every resource is directed toward meaningful impact.”

“Hopewell is investing in Sunflower because we believe that when social justice organizations have world-class infrastructure, they can focus their energy where it belongs – on building power and creating change,” Hopewell Fund told The Daily Signal.

“Sunflower’s commitment to directness, accountability, and responsible business practices is exactly what organizations—especially those working on climate and environmental solutions—need from a true values-aligned partner,” Windward Fund told The Daily Signal.

Why the Change?

Scott Walter, president of the Capital Research Center and author of the book “Arabella: The Dark Money Network of Leftist Billionaires Secretly Transforming America,” characterized the transition as a “rebrand” and took credit for making the Arabella Advisors brand “toxic.”

“We’re proud of ourselves for what we’ve been able to do,” Walter told The Daily Signal in a phone call Tuesday. “Why do you rebrand? To make yourself less toxic.”

Walter dismissed the idea that Arabella Advisors might have been going out of business. He noted that the 2024 IRS records for the Arabella-connected nonprofits recently became public, and “total nonprofit revenues were up a bit in 2024.”

“It is just a rebranding and a complexifying and maybe it’s also a c3-c4 splitting,” he theorized.

Walter has repeatedly testified before Congress, sometimes alongside me, on how Americans’ tax dollars supported left-leaning groups such as the nonprofits linked to Arabella. His work on Arabella, along with my research, highlighted the structure and political influence of the Left’s dark money network.

Walter suggested Sunflower Services acquired Arabella Advisors in part to make the dark money funding trail more complex. “The more complex this story is, the harder it is for you or me to explain it anywhere,” he said.

A Threat from the Trump Administration?

The Arabella move comes two months after President Donald Trump issued a memorandum on “countering domestic terrorism and organized political violence” that highlights domestic threats allegedly motivated by “anti-fascist” forces and targets “organized structures, networks, entities, organizations,” and funding sources allegedly behind the violence.

The Free Press reported that Trump’s memo had a “chilling effect” on major liberal foundations.

Lawson Bader, president and CEO of Donors Trust, told The Daily Signal that he did not think Arabella had anything to do with violence, but suggested that Arabella’s dissolution is “in part” a “response to the White House directive.”

“No question, ‘progressive’ or ‘liberal’ organizations are feeling the pressure of the public statements from the White House,” Bader said. He suggested some of them regret not being “as aggressively critical of Barack Obama and Joe Biden when conservative nonprofits were getting harassed.”

Bader expressed hope that nonprofits on the Right and the Left can form “multi-ideological alliances to keep the IRS away from everybody (except those obviously doing actual illegal things).”

White House spokeswoman Abigail Jackson emphasized the focus on illegality in her statement to The Daily Signal on the issue.

“The president’s executive actions to address left-wing violence will employ a whole-of-government approach to end to any illegal activities,” she told The Daily Signal.

Sunflower Services, Sixteen Thirty Fund, North Fund, and Impetus Fund did not respond to The Daily Signal’s request for comment.

This article originally appeared at The Daily Signal.