Direct-Action Grantees, Self-Dealing, and the 94.6 Percent
OGAN's 2023 Form 990 is public. What it says — and what it declined to say — moves "The SWIFT Code" from exempt-purpose mismatch into political-campaign territory.
Part One ended with an open question. We knew from public summaries that OGAN had disclosed three grants on its 2023 Schedule I — recipients in Washington, Georgia, and Pennsylvania — but the grantee names sat behind paywalls. I asked readers to surface the PDF. Someone did. It arrived with thirty-five pages, every schedule intact, the object ID confirmed by the IRS e-file stamp: 202402569349301605. Submitted September 12, 2024. Signed under penalty of perjury by Matt Leonard, Executive Director, on September 11, 2024.
Three grants. $332,000 in total cash moved from a California 501(c)(3) called the Oil & Gas Action Network into three direct-action protest organizations in three different federal-corridor states. And here is what nobody quoting the summary numbers had seen: two of the three recipients are 501(c)(4) political action organizations, not public charities.
On its own, that is a technical Form 990 column entry. In the full context of the return — where OGAN's board affirmatively answered "No" to the question of whether it engaged in direct or indirect political campaign activities — it becomes something else. It becomes the central evidentiary exhibit in the case I laid out in Part One.
Here is what OGAN's Form 990, Schedule I, Part II actually says. Column headings are the IRS's own. The "IRC section" column — labeled (c) on the form — is the part that rearranges the story.
| (a) Name & Address | (b) EIN | (c) IRC Section | (d) Cash Grant | (h) Purpose |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Climate Defiance Action 2601 Woodley Pl NW Apt 913 Washington, DC 20008 |
92-3098833 | 501c4 | $296,000 | ORGANIZING SUPPORT |
| Beloved Community 1102 Oak Knoll Terrace Atlanta, GA 30315 |
85-3823416 | 501c3 | $18,000 | ORGANIZING SUPPORT |
| Rising Tide North America 100 S Broad St Box 22521 Philadelphia, PA 19110 |
45-2417152 | 501c4 | $18,000 | TRAINING AND MOBILIZING |
The summary line is the IRS's own count, written by OGAN itself on its own return: one 501(c)(3) recipient, two "other" recipients — meaning 501(c)(4)s. This is not an interpretive claim. This is OGAN reporting, in OGAN's own numbers and OGAN's own columns, that two of the three organizations it granted to in 2023 were political action organizations.
Do the math. $296,000 to Climate Defiance Action (c4) plus $18,000 to Rising Tide North America (c4) equals $314,000 in cash moved from an environmental 501(c)(3) into 501(c)(4) political organizations. Against a total Schedule I of $332,000, that is 94.6 percent of OGAN's 2023 domestic grantmaking.
Understand what those two IRS designations mean in practice. A 501(c)(3) is a public charity. Donations to it are tax-deductible. Its program work must be charitable, educational, religious, scientific, or otherwise within the narrow band the Internal Revenue Code permits. It cannot engage in substantial lobbying, and is absolutely prohibited from any direct or indirect political campaign activity for or against candidates. That prohibition is, in the language of the Treasury Regulations, absolute — not a quantitative limit but a bright line.
A 501(c)(4) is a social welfare organization. Donations to it are not tax-deductible. It can engage in unlimited lobbying. It can engage in direct political campaign activity, provided political activity is not its "primary" function. Many 501(c)(4)s exist for the specific purpose of doing what 501(c)(3)s are forbidden from doing — confronting candidates, influencing elections, pressuring elected officials on policy.
When a 501(c)(3) wires money to a 501(c)(4), the Code does not categorically prohibit the transaction, but it imposes strict conditions. The grant must be restricted in writing to activities the 501(c)(3) could lawfully conduct itself. The grantor must be able to document that the funds were spent only on those restricted activities. The restriction cannot be generic language. It must be activity-specific, traceable, and verifiable. If the 501(c)(3) cannot produce the restriction agreement and the usage documentation, the IRS treats the grant as a direct expenditure by the grantor on impermissible activity — which for a 501(c)(3) means a violation of the exempt purpose standard, and potentially a political campaign activity violation.
The purpose column on OGAN's Schedule I reads, for both 501(c)(4) recipients: "ORGANIZING SUPPORT" and "TRAINING AND MOBILIZING." Four words and three words respectively. That is the entirety of the documented restriction as it appears on the return. The Schedule I Part IV supplemental response adds a single generic sentence: "WE CREATE A GRANT AGREEMENT THAT OUTLINES THE USE OF FUNDS BOTH FOR LEGAL COMPLIANCE AND ACCOUNTABILITY TO OUR MISSION. THE RECIPIENT SIGNS THIS AND A REPORT IS TYPICALLY REQUESTED AT THE END OF THE GRANT TERM." "Typically requested" is doing an enormous amount of load-bearing work in that sentence.
When the IRS Exempt Organizations Division or the California Attorney General's Registry of Charitable Trusts reviews a 501(c)(3) that granted 94.6 percent of its domestic disbursements to 501(c)(4)s in a single year, they will ask two questions in sequence. First, produce the written grant restriction agreements for each (c)(4) recipient. Second, produce the end-of-term reports documenting that the restricted funds were spent only on 501(c)(3)-permissible activity. If the agreements and reports do not exist — or if they contain only generic language like "organizing support" — the regulator's analysis does not end in a warning letter. It ends in revocation proceedings or worse.
Go to page 3 of the return. Part IV, line 3 asks a direct binary question:
Did the organization engage in direct or indirect political campaign activities on behalf of or in opposition to candidates for public office? If "Yes," complete Schedule C, Part I. — Form 990, Part IV, Line 3
OGAN answered: "No."
Schedule C was not filed. OGAN represented, under penalty of perjury, that it did not engage in political campaign activities — directly or indirectly — during the 2023 tax year.
Now hold that "No" against what OGAN granted $296,000 to in 2023. The grantee, as named on Schedule I, is "Climate Defiance Action." Not "Climate Defiance" — that is the sister 501(c)(3). "Climate Defiance Action" is the 501(c)(4) arm. And Climate Defiance, taken as a whole organization, uses direct-action protests to, in the words of its own founder, break through an "inside game" of lobbying and coalition letters. Co-founder Michael Greenberg's stated operational doctrine: confrontation of elected officials rather than engagement.
The roster of confronted officials runs exclusively through sitting federal officeholders: Senator Joe Manchin at a Semafor event. Senator Amy Klobuchar at a George Washington University book launch. Senator Chuck Schumer outside his New York City home. Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm. White House National Climate Advisor Ali Zaidi. Senior advisor to the president John Podesta. The point of these confrontations, per the co-founder's own statements, is to influence the decisions these officeholders make. Whether that qualifies as "political campaign activity" for federal tax purposes depends on whether the confrontations are timed to candidacies, and whether the pressure is aimed at officeholder policy positions versus elective outcomes.
That is a live legal question. It is the kind of question Schedule C, Part I exists to surface for regulatory review. OGAN's answer of "No" to Part IV Line 3 represented that no such question existed on its return. The $296,000 to Climate Defiance Action says a regulator should not take that representation at face value.
The distinction between Climate Defiance (the 501(c)(3)) and Climate Defiance Action (the 501(c)(4) recorded on OGAN's Schedule I) is not a minor branding point. Most climate advocacy movements that run both kinds of entities use the c3 for education and the c4 for pressure campaigns against officeholders. OGAN chose to route its grant to the c4 arm. A c3 granting to another c3 is routine. A c3 granting to a c4 — especially for "organizing support" — is the pattern the IRS has built an entire compliance regime around preventing.
Climate Defiance Action's address on the Schedule I is residential: 2601 Woodley Pl NW Apt 913, Washington, DC 20008. This is an apartment unit in Woodley Park — almost certainly the personal residence of a Climate Defiance organizer. A 501(c)(4) political organization receiving $296,000, operating out of an apartment in northwest D.C., is not unusual for small direct-action groups. What it is, however, is a signal that the grantee has minimal institutional infrastructure, and therefore minimal capacity to administer a written restriction agreement and produce documented end-of-term reporting at the standard the IRS will demand if it reviews the transaction.
The third entry on the Schedule I is the one that turns this return from a regulatory exposure into a self-dealing question.
Scott Parkin is listed on page 8 of the 990 as a Director of the Oil & Gas Action Network, on the six-person board whose names have not changed in two fiscal years. His hours per week are reported as 2.00. His compensation is $0.
Rising Tide North America is the $18,000 recipient on Schedule I, Part II, Line 3. Its purpose on the grant is "TRAINING AND MOBILIZING." Its address — "100 S Broad St Box 22521, Philadelphia, PA 19110" — is a commercial mail drop, not a physical office.
Scott Parkin's public-facing relationship to Rising Tide North America is a matter of the organization's own published record. The Rising Tide North America website's press-contact page lists a single name: Scott Parkin. A single phone number: (415) 235-0596. Parkin's Medium profile describes him, in the first sentence, as "Lover, fighter and organizer with Rising Tide North America." His CounterPunch byline reads: "Scott Parkin is a climate organizer with Rainforest Action Network and Rising Tide North America." His Truthout byline, his Common Dreams byline, and Rising Tide North America's own June 2013 coverage of Keystone XL activism all identify Parkin as an organizer with RTNA. His Wikipedia entry, in its lead paragraph: "Since 2006, he has worked as a campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network. He also organizes with Rising Tide North America."
For Schedule L purposes under the Internal Revenue Code, a related-party transaction exists when a director, officer, or key employee of a 501(c)(3) has a personal interest — direct or indirect, financial or in-kind — in a transaction the 501(c)(3) is party to. The IRS has repeatedly taken the position that "indirect" interest reaches beyond formal titles. If a board member is the public face of a recipient organization, handles that organization's external communications, and is identified by multiple independent publications over more than a decade as an organizer of that organization, the board member's relationship to the grant recipient is a Schedule L disclosable relationship regardless of whether he holds a formal officer title at the recipient.
OGAN's Form 990 Part IV line 28a asks: "Was the organization a party to a business transaction with ... a current or former officer, director, trustee, key employee, creator or founder, or substantial contributor? If Yes, complete Schedule L, Part IV." OGAN answered: "No."
Line 28c asks: "A 35% controlled entity of one or more individuals and/or organizations described in line 28a or 28b?" OGAN answered: "No."
Schedule L was not filed. No related-party transaction was disclosed in connection with the $18,000 grant to Rising Tide North America. The Schedule O narrative voluntarily discloses that two other OGAN directors, Scott Parkin and Nicky Davies, are married — so we know OGAN's accountant and board are attentive to the general question of Schedule O disclosures about interrelationships among directors. They chose to disclose the Parkin-Davies marriage. They chose not to disclose Parkin's relationship to a grant recipient that received $18,000 from OGAN that same year.
When the IRS Exempt Organizations Division reviews OGAN's 2023 return, the question posed to Matt Leonard and the five directors will be: did Scott Parkin, in the ordinary course of fulfilling his functions as an organizer of Rising Tide North America, derive any personal benefit — compensation, reimbursement, stipend, honoraria, travel coverage, speaking fees, publishing advance, podcast promotion, or otherwise — from the $18,000 that flowed from OGAN to Rising Tide North America? If the answer is anything other than a documented, provable zero, the grant is a related-party transaction that was required to be disclosed on Schedule L and was not. That is a false statement on a Form 990 signed under penalty of perjury.
The Nicky Davies disclosure on Schedule O is itself worth noting. Davies is OGAN's Secretary, 2 hours per week, $0 compensation. She is simultaneously Executive Director of another environmental nonprofit (Plastic Solutions Fund). She is married to Scott Parkin. The marriage was disclosed — properly — on Schedule O Part VI Line 2. But the pattern that emerges is consistent: OGAN's board makes some disclosures and elects not to make others. Which disclosures made the cut is a pattern regulators will notice.
The one actual 501(c)(3) on OGAN's 2023 Schedule I is Beloved Community Ministries Inc. — a public charity whose IRS determination letter was issued in 2021, principal officer Matthew V. Johnson Jr., Atlanta-based. The address OGAN reported on Schedule I is 1102 Oak Knoll Terrace, Atlanta GA 30315. The address the organization reports to GuideStar and Charity Navigator is different: 1742 McLendon Ave NE, Atlanta GA 30307. Two different Atlanta addresses is a minor disclosure inconsistency but not disqualifying — the McLendon address appears to be the organizational mailing address; the Oak Knoll address appears to be a project site or community house functioning as the grant-administration location.
Beloved Community Ministries' own self-description, from a 2021 GoFundMe campaign operated by the organization: "a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization in Atlanta that aims to support social justice movements and the individuals who invest their being in creating the world they wish to see through housing, mutual aid, skills development, and education, grounded in wellness and mindfulness practices."
And from the same GoFundMe, describing Beloved Community's actual operational focus:
Beloved Community directed the bulk of its operational capacity toward the fight to Defend the Atlanta Forest (DTAF) and Stop Cop City (SCC), supporting the organizers, activists and concerned citizens who have been on the frontlines of this struggle. — Beloved Community Ministries, 2021 Public Fundraising Statement
Stop Cop City is the direct-action campaign against the construction of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center in the South River Forest. It is the same campaign under which, in January 2023, activist Manuel "Tortuguita" Terán was shot and killed during a Georgia State Patrol raid on a protest encampment. It is the same campaign in which Georgia state prosecutors brought a 61-defendant RICO indictment against protesters, organizers, and bail-fund administrators, alleging a criminal enterprise tied to the movement. It is, as a factual matter, the most prominent domestic direct-action campaign involving criminal prosecutions in the United States over the last three years. Whatever one's views on the merits of the Cop City fight, its operational overlap with Atlanta organizing networks that include Beloved Community Ministries is a matter of the organization's own public statements.
That does not make Beloved Community's mission itself unlawful, nor does it render the $18,000 grant from OGAN impermissible on its face. What it does make is operationally consistent: all three of OGAN's 2023 Schedule I grantees are direct action organizations. Not research. Not education. Not scientific study of oil and gas extraction impacts. Direct action:
This is the picture that emerges when Schedule I is read alongside OGAN's mission statement. The mission statement speaks of research and public education on the environmental and human-health impacts of oil and gas extraction. The Schedule I describes a grantmaking program whose exclusive purpose is funding direct-action protest organizations. Those are not the same program.
In Part One I noted that every one of OGAN's Form 990 filings from 2022 through 2024 includes Schedule F — the statement of activities outside the United States. The actual 2023 Schedule F resolves the ambiguity.
Five regions of foreign activity reported:
Total: 14 foreign-based personnel across five regions, $87,565 in foreign expenditures.
The Europe figure dominates. A Berkeley, California, climate-advocacy 501(c)(3) operating nine employees, agents, or independent contractors in Europe including Iceland and Greenland, at a cost of $84,171, under the activity-type description "program services" and the service description "PROGRAM SUPPORT," is filing a disclosure that describes a substantial operational footprint in a geography whose connection to OGAN's stated mission is at best indirect. The 2022 Schedule F referenced a $30,000 wire to Europe for "climate campaign"; the 2023 filing is a 2.8× larger expenditure, a broader personnel count, and a more diffuse description.
The FARA question from Part One becomes more acute. The SWIFT correspondent-banking rail on the FWAD funding document provides an inbound channel for foreign funds into OGAN's Beneficial State Bank account. The Schedule F confirms OGAN has an outbound operational footprint in Europe of nine personnel. If those personnel are engaged in program activities related to the domestic U.S. political organizing that OGAN's fiscal sponsorship of FWAD facilitates, the question of whether FWAD's activities are conducted "on behalf of" a foreign principal — FARA's predicate element — moves from speculative to empirical.
Part IX of the return — Statement of Functional Expenses — contains a line worth reading closely.
Line 11g is labeled "Fees for services (non-employees): Other." It is the catch-all for professional services that don't fit the preceding named categories (management, legal, accounting, lobbying, professional fundraising, investment management). For 2023, OGAN's reported amount on line 11g is $401,642.
That is the largest single expenditure category on the return — approximately equal to all salaries combined ($399,548 on line 7), and 23 percent of OGAN's total expenses for the year.
Because line 11g exceeds 10 percent of column (A) line 25, the instructions require the organization to itemize that line on Schedule O. OGAN's Schedule O itemization, in its entirety, reads:
$401,642 WAS PAID TO CONTRACTORS FOR PROGRAM WORK ACROSS ALL ACTIVITIES. — Schedule O, Part IX, Line 11g supplemental disclosure
That is the totality of the disclosure. One sentence. Fourteen words. No names, no activities, no allocation, no summary of who was paid.
To put that $401,642 in context: it is twenty-two times the amount of the $18,000 grants to Beloved Community and to Rising Tide North America. It is approximately 35 percent larger than the $296,000 grant to Climate Defiance Action. It is thirty percent larger than the total of all named grants on Schedule I combined. It is the single largest discretionary category of OGAN's 2023 spending. And it is disclosed in fourteen words of generic narrative.
Who the $401,642 went to is a question of acute interest. Program-side contractors paid $401,642 in aggregate, with no individual contractor named and no individual payment amount broken out, is where the operational work of OGAN's fiscal sponsorship program would, by default, live on a Form 990. FWAD organizing support — trainings, consultants, digital infrastructure, video-call production, slide-deck preparation — would, by standard nonprofit accounting, flow through precisely this line.
On receipt of a Schedule I–triggered inquiry, the next document IRS Exempt Organizations or the California Attorney General will request is the detailed contractor list supporting the $401,642 line. That list will have names, dollar amounts, and project descriptions. If any of those contractors were paid for work that can reasonably be classified as lobbying, political organizing, federal-worker recruitment, or election-related activity, the exempt-purpose question gets answered on the spot — in unfavorable terms for OGAN's board and officers, regardless of how the underlying grants are characterized.
Part One described the SWIFT-code-enabled international funding rail as the evidentiary exhibit that moved OGAN's structure from exempt-purpose question into referral-grade DOJ theory. Part Two adds three facts that sharpen that picture:
First: the disposition of OGAN's 2023 grantmaking was 94.6 percent to 501(c)(4) political action organizations. The same return answered "No" to direct or indirect political campaign activity. Those two representations cannot both be consistent with each other absent written restriction agreements and documented usage reports — which, if they exist, will be produced on request; if they do not exist, then the "No" on Part IV Line 3 is not defensible.
Second: the $18,000 grant to Rising Tide North America is, at minimum, a question requiring Schedule L disclosure. Scott Parkin's role at the grant recipient is publicly documented across more than a decade of his own published work. The decision not to disclose the relationship on Schedule L — while simultaneously volunteering the Parkin-Davies marriage on Schedule O — is a pattern of selective disclosure that regulators notice.
Third: the three grantees are all direct-action organizations. None is an environmental-research nonprofit. None is engaged primarily in public education on the environmental or human-health impacts of oil and gas extraction. All three are, by their own public descriptions, organizations whose operational focus is confrontational protest of officeholders and infrastructure targets.
Layer that onto Part One's central finding. OGAN's 501(c)(3) tax shelter is fiscally sponsoring a federal-worker political-organizing operation (FWAD) whose Pompi-deck content is categorically outside the stated charitable purpose; is funding direct action against federal officeholders through 501(c)(4) grant recipients whose entire operational logic is confronting the same population of officeholders; is sheltering a regional chapter of Bill McKibben's Third Act political advocacy network (Third Act DC/MD/VA) in the Washington-federal-workforce corridor; and is funneling $401,642 through an undisclosed contractor book that, on a standard nonprofit accounting trail, is exactly where the operational work of a fiscal-sponsor platform lives.
The grants are the back door. The contractor line is the front door. The SWIFT rail is the loading dock. And the "No" on Part IV Line 3 is the sign above the door that says none of this is happening.
Part One laid out a seven-way referral package — IRS EO, California AG, House Ways and Means, House Administration and Senate Judiciary, Office of Special Counsel, U.S. Attorney NDCA, and DOJ FARA Unit. Every one of those referral destinations still applies. Part Two's findings sharpen three of them and add a new one.
The 94.6-percent-to-c4 finding moves this from a discretionary-review posture into a priority-queue posture. A 501(c)(3) moving nearly all its domestic grant dollars into 501(c)(4) political organizations is precisely the fact pattern the EO Division is designed to flag. Add the Part IV Line 3 "No" contradiction and the Schedule L non-disclosure around Rising Tide, and the referral carries three independent predicates rather than one.
California's charitable-purpose enforcement authority applies independently of federal determinations. The California AG has authority to audit OGAN's records directly, compel production of the grant restriction agreements and end-of-term reports, and require a restated Form 990 if disclosures are found deficient. California's standard for charitable purpose is statutory — it does not require a federal revocation to proceed.
OSC's Hatch Act jurisdiction attaches to the Pompi-deck content (Part One). The 2023 Schedule I adds a second theory: if any of the direct-action activity funded by OGAN's $296,000 grant to Climate Defiance Action involved federal employees participating in their official capacities — voter registration drives, GOTV operations, or candidate-pressure actions conducted on federal time — OSC's jurisdiction attaches to that activity as well, regardless of whether OGAN or Climate Defiance themselves are subject to the Hatch Act.
The published SWIFT rail in the FWAD funding document, combined with OGAN's Schedule F disclosure of $84,171 and nine personnel in Europe, creates a sufficient predicate for FinCEN review of the correspondent banking relationship between PNC Bank and Beneficial State Bank as it pertains to the OGAN beneficiary account 1069902875. FinCEN does not require a concluded criminal case; its suspicious-activity-report regime is designed precisely for transactional patterns of this shape.
Part Two closed the 2023 Schedule I question. It opened three more. The next set of document pulls, in order of likely yield:
Each of these five pulls is now a discrete investigative thread. Readers with professional access to any of them — nonprofit researchers, investigative journalists, state AG staff, congressional oversight staff — are the next participants in this inquiry.
Part One ended with the image of a shell and a cargo. The shell is the 501(c)(3) — OGAN's legal personality, its stated climate-research mission, its California public-charity status, its IRS determination letter. The cargo is what the shell carries — sponsored projects, grants, contracts, personnel, banking relationships, program activities.
What Part Two added is simple. The cargo was named. Three 501(c)(4) political action organizations funded at 94.6 percent of the grantmaking budget. A federal-workforce-corridor Congressional caucus at the receiving end. An undisclosed $401,642 contractor book. A European footprint of nine personnel. A SWIFT-enabled inbound wire rail published in a public solicitation document. And a board of six fiduciaries who each signed, or each by signature authorized, the 2023 Form 990 under penalty of perjury — the return that answered "No" to the question of political campaign activity while reporting that 94.6 percent of its domestic grant dollars went to 501(c)(4) political action organizations.
The shell is real. The cargo is real. The distance between them is where the entire regulatory case lives. Part Two confirmed, using the organization's own return submitted under the organization's own signature, that the distance between shell and cargo is not a rounding error. It is 94.6 percent.
Whoever drafted that 2023 Form 990 drafted it for an IRS audit intake review. That review has not yet happened. But the facts on the return are now public — forty pages in a PDF that anyone with a browser can download — and they do not require interpretation. They require reading.