A new nonprofit filed its incorporation paperwork on Aug. 6, with an address in Ventura and the name Save Our Home Planet Action, Inc. Its stated goals include “raising awareness of the current environmental crisis,” land preservation and restoration, and lobbying and advocacy. .
It had no website, no known donors and no apparent source of revenue. But he had money. Ten days after its founding, it gave nearly $900,000 to two political action committees.
His political spending in the summer and fall of 2024 totaled $2.2 million, given to five different PACs that supported Democrats in last year’s state and federal election campaigns, according to the reports submitted to the Federal Election Commission.
This drew the attention of the Campaign Legal Center, a campaign finance and government ethics watchdog group in Washington, DC. But they can only give their money. They cannot take money from an unknown person, company or group and redirect it to political campaigns.
Anyone who does this, hiding the true source of the money they donate to political groups, is known as a “straw donor.” Last month, the Campaign Legal Center filed a complaint with the FEC accusing Save Our Home Planet Action of participating in a straw donor scheme.
“In a straw donor scheme, one person gives money to a second person, who contributes the money, and only the second person’s name shows up on the official report,” said Shanna Ports, senior counsel for the Campaign Legal Center. for campaign finance. “These schemes are illegal. They completely undermine transparency in the elections.”
The complaint of the Legal Center of the Campaign is against the Action of Save Our Home Planet and “any unknown person” who provided its funds. But the group doesn’t actually think these people are unknown: Its complaint identifies Ventura-based outdoor clothing retailer Patagonia, or people affiliated with Patagonia, as the likely source of the money.
The complaint refers to $1.4 million in questionable donations, instead of $2.2 million, because Save Our Home Planet Action’s largest single donation was not reported until the Campaign Legal Fund wrote its complaint, Ports said.
Patagonia representatives declined The Star’s requests for an interview.
“We are aware of the complaint and expect to respond in due course,” Patagonia spokesman JJ Huggins said in an email to The Star. “We cannot comment further at this time.”
The story continues below.
Non-profit connections with Patagonia
The FEC complaint cites two clear links between Save Our Home Planet Action and Patagonia. The first is the name: “Save Our Home Planet” is a slogan that Patagonia has used many times, including on the t-shirts and in its mission statement.
The second is the address on the files of Save Our Home Planet Action. It is 259 W. Santa Clara St. in Ventura, the same as Patagonia’s corporate headquarters.
There is another connection, one not mentioned in the FEC complaint. According to corporate records filed with the California Secretary of StateSave Our Home Planet Action has two leaders: Greg Curtis, the CEO and corporate secretary, and Charlie Bischoff, the chief financial officer.
Both men work for Patagonia or its parent company, according to their LinkedIn profiles. Curtis was a lawyer for Patagonia from 2014 to 2022 and is now executive director of Holdfast Collective, the non-profit holding company that owns Patagonia. Bischoff was the director of the treasury of Patagonia since 2018 and is also the part-time director of finance and operations for the Holdfast Collective.
The five recipients of Save Our Home Planet Action of $2.2 million in donations they are all large, well-known organizations that support Democrats running for state or federal office. Collectively, these PACs spent more than $1.3 billion in the 2024 election cycle.
Save Our Home Planet Action gave $1.2 million in two separate donations LCV Victory Funda PAC affiliated with the League of Conservation Voters that supports environmental candidates and causes. The rest of the nonprofit donations went to PACs that spent heavily on Democratic candidates for president, US Senate, House of Representatives and state legislative races.
Ports said it seems “probable” that Patagonia or executives working for the company created and financed the new non-profit and directed its spending. They haven’t tried much to cover their tracks, but he said the law requires clear disclosure of the source of the funds.
“Because of the speed with which this organization began to transfer money to political committees, it suggests that the people who financed it gave that money exactly to be donated to these committees, and they may hide their identities in the process” , said Ports.
“Always an uphill battle” at the FEC
Save Our Home Planet Action was established under section 501(c)(4) of the United States tax code. This means that it is a social welfare non-profit rather than a non-profit benefit. Nonprofits of this type can spend unlimited amounts on politics and do not need to disclose their donors. Donations to them are not tax-deductible, as for charitable, non-profit organizations, which are subject to section 501 (c) (3) of the tax code.
Social welfare associations are often large players in US politics. Two classic examples are the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association. But the ACLU and the NRA solicit donations from the general public, and their missions and political goals are well known.
It’s unclear how anyone was donating to Save Our Planet, and the group hasn’t taken any public action outside of its recent campaign spending spree. Those facts support the theory that it exists only to contribute campaign contributions, said Saurav Ghosh, the director of the Campaign Legal Center of federal campaign finance.
“Is this a for-profit in the sense that it has a larger mission consistent with its nonprofit status, or is it a nonprofit in the sense that it has been used to make political contributions that actually come from someone else?” Ghosh said.
Ports said the Campaign Legal Center typically finds a couple of potential straw donor schemes in each new batch of FEC filings. He only files complaints with the FEC about the “most egregious” examples, he said.
“It’s always an uphill battle with complaints to the FEC,” Ports said. “They’ve been moving in a deregulatory direction lately and haven’t taken action on many complaints, and on top of that, they’re a pretty slow agency when they decide to act.”
The penalty for a straw donor scheme would typically be a fine, Ports said. The FEC doesn’t publicize its schedule, he said, to keep political operatives from budgeting for violations as part of the cost of doing business.
“We hope the FEC takes these complaints seriously,” Ports said. “This is one of the only tools we have against dark money.”
Tony Biasotti is an investigative and watchdog reporter for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tbiasotti@vcstar.com. This story was made possible by a grant from the Ventura County Community Foundation Fund to support local journalism.