Healthcare nonprofit foundations and others dump $1.3 million into Kansas elections for “peer pressure with a purpose”
The Voter Network: History and Financials
Updated Feb. 12, 2024.
This is the second of a two-part series about The Voter Network, which has become a “forcing function” on how elections work in Kansas.
Part 1. Non-stop, well-funded, nonprofit progressive activism is the “new normal” in Kansas elections
The Voter Network, “peer pressure with a purpose,” has huge funding from non-profit health foundations
The Voter Network is only one part of “Integrated Voter Engagement,” which seeks to control all aspects of elections and government in Kansas. A future article will show the millions already spent on IVE in Kansas.
The Voter Network history
Mainstream Coalition was started by the late Rev. Dr. Bob Meneilly, the former pastor of Village Presbyterian Church, and its founding is often traced to his Aug. 15, 1993 sermon “that decried the rise of the radical religious right movement and urged moderation in politics and the separation of church and state.” The audio from this sermon is still online.
Next we jump to the founding of The Voter Network and its Voter-to-Voter project.
2016
From a job description for a Voter Engagement Coordinator …
In the summer of 2016, MEF launched its Be A Voter initiative, with the aim to create a culture of voting in northeast Kansas. We hired dozens of interns who spent their time canvassing, calling, tabling and engaging voters on the importance of voting. But after that election cycle, we began rethinking our traditional voter contact methods. We know persuasion is more effective when you are approached by people you know. What if we empowered a vast network of volunteers willing to talk to their own friends about voting? What if they knew which of their colleagues, classmates or cousins didn’t normally vote, and targeted their efforts there?
2018
The Kansas Health Foundation announced Mainstream’s “Be a Voter” project would funded as part of a new project in May 2018: “Kansas Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE): Health Depends on a Vibrant Democracy.”
MainStream Education Foundation: To launch the IVE campaign, “Be a Voter,” which will engage community advocates and faith, education and business leaders in Olathe, Shawnee Mission and Kansas City, Kansas to identify health equity issues important to their populations and devise strategies to connect those issues with voting and broader civic engagement. MainStream will develop IVE messaging and engage voters year-round on specific health equity issues, including food insecurity, health care access, education and job growth.
2019
From an article by Juliana Garcia in the Shawnee Mission Post, Nov. 5, 2019:
When MainStream launched its Voter to Voter project last year, the organization found it difficult to communicate where to find candidate information to 500 volunteers across 105 counties in Kansas, Behgam said. She said she reached out to Ballot Ready, a nonprofit in Chicago, about creating a comprehensive guide for the 2019 local elections. Now, the tool, called ksballot.org, is available statewide in cities of 5,000 or more people.
With ksballot.org, users can put in their address to find out which races and the respective candidates will appear on their ballot. By clicking on a race and then a candidate, users can see where candidates stand on policies and who has endorsed the candidates. Users can access a candidate's social media profiles or website by clicking on the links below their name.
2020
Mainstream Coalition announced The Voter Network on July 14, 2020:
The Mainstream Coalition is excited and proud to launch the The Voter Network, a nonpartisan nonprofit with a focus on voter engagement for Kansas that will drive changes in representation and politics for decades to come.
The Voter Network isn't brand new, it is a re-focusing of the work we have always done at Mainstream to inform and engage voters on the importance of voting to their own lives. That work used to be done under the Mainstream Education Foundation, which has been renamed the Voter Network Foundation, and streamlined to work on voter turnout, voter education, and voter empowerment.
The Voter Network's mission is no less than to turn Kansas into the highest voter turnout state in the nation.
The Voter Network is part of the Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) project announced by the Kansas Health Foundation in 2018 (see above).
2023
Hayden Ludwig, director of policy research for Restoration of America, wrote on Feb. 21, 2023 about “Blueing Kansas: How activist groups use their networks to turn out the vote for Democrats in traditionally red states”:
You don’t have to look far to find the left’s multi-million dollar activist machine in action. Now they are turning their sights on Kansas, a red state they hope to flip blue—and there is no shortage of get out the vote money for the job.
At the scheme’s center is the Kansas Health Foundation, a “social justice” advocacy group masquerading as a local issues charity. In reality, it is one of the left’s channels for voter registration money flowing into the Sunflower State.
In 2017, a year after the state went 57.2 percent for President Donald Trump, the foundation launched its Integrated Voter Engagement (IVE) Initiative with funding for get out the vote groups “to increase civic engagement among populations who…do not currently participate in the democratic process.”
Grants from healthcare foundations
“Partners” of The Voter Network have contributed over a $1 million to their work over the last few years.
Contribution details from five of the six nonprofit above is shown below. Information is from IRS 990s whenever possible, but publicly disclosed planned expenditures by these organizations has also been included.
No financial information about the United Methodist Health Ministry Fund is disclosed on nonprofit IRS filings since the IRS classifies it as a religious organization. Both The United Methodist Health Ministry Fund and Kansas Health Foundation are the nonprofits created from the 1985 sale of the Wesley Medical Center in Wichita.
Documentation of nonprofit contributions to The Voter Network are complicated because of their change of names, the delay of releasing IRS 990s by the IRS purportedly due to COVID, and the general delays of a year of two in “normal” IRS 990 reporting by nonprofits.
Kansas Health Foundation: $275,000
Much of the information about spending by the Kansas Health Foundation can only be found on the Wayback Machine from old press releases.
Note in 2018 KHF spent $25,000 for “growing MainStream to Grow Healthier Communities.” Summary pages of such KHF grants exist but the detail pages are not available from the Wayback Machine.
A March 2018 KHF press release said Mainstream Education Fund received a Phase 1 grant of $225,000 “to launch the IVE campaign, ‘Be a Voter’” campaign. That was paid by REACH Healthcare (see below) instead of KHF.
Updated Dec. 11, 2023: The Kansas Health Foundation’s 2022 IRS 990, which was obtained directly from KHF yesterday, shows a $225,000 grant to The Voter Network Foundation in 2022.
Let’s assume this $225,000 matches the last three grants in the table above, and was not a separate new grant.
This spending is related to KHF’s $5 million “Integrated Voter Engagement” project that started in 2016 or 2017. But the 2016 and 2017 IRS 990-PFs from the Kansas Health Foundation are missing attachments showing their grants for those years. These attachments are missing in the IRS 990s on the IRS site, Propublica and Candid’s sites.
Requests to obtain these missing attachments sent directly to Ed O’Malley, President and CEO of Kansas Health Foundation, have not been answered. KHF claims they only need to supply forms for the last three years.
An IRS Form 4506-A was recently sent to the IRS requesting these missing attachments.
Health Forward Foundation: $425,000
Actually, The Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City doing business as Health Forward Foundation.
An IRS 990 documents the 2020 grant, but other Health Forward grants can only be found in their online press releases. See 2022 and 2023 press releases.
The Reach Healthcare Foundation: $220,000 + $225,000
Updated Feb. 12, 2024
An IRS 990 documents the 2019 grant, but the other grants are only known from press releases in 2021 and 2022 and from the REACH grants page.
The REACH grants page indicates the $30,000 in 2019 was also to “rebrand the nonprofit arm of the organization.” Mainstream Education Foundation became The Voter Network.
For Phase 1 of IVE at Mainstream Coalition REACH Healthcare paid $225,000 to United Community Services of Johnson County on behalf of The Mainstream Education Foundation for “multi-year voter engagement activities aimed at improving civic participation and decreasing health inequities.” This was not known in the original article.
Others funding The Voter Network: $134,950
The Tides Foundation nonprofit is a decades-old “dark money” organization. Influence Watch says Tides “is a major center-left grantmaking organization and a major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits.”
Since 2007, the Tides Foundation has reported revenues totaling $2.6 billion. In 2020, the Tides Foundation paid out $607 million in grants. [Influence Watch]
According to Influence Watch, All Hands on Deck Network (now Movement Voter Project) “is a clearinghouse for Democratic donors to contribute to Democratic-aligned political groups.”
What’s on the horizon?
Future articles will discuss many additional aspects of Integrated Voter Engagement, including huge funding from the Kansas Health Foundation and Health Forward.
Earlier this year Health Forward announced an aggressive plan to increase support and funding, which is reflected in their 2023 grants.
From Health Forward infographic:
Power
Strategies: Advance capacity building leadership development, and connectedness. Advance participation in democracy. Support community-driven efforts to redistribute and share power.
Outcomes: Stronger, more effective community-based organizations an leaders. Increased effectiveness of community organizing and civic participation. Increased community voice and shared power in philanthropy decisions.
Your research is amazing. I'm not in Kansas but I've seen similar tactics used in the Carolinas - where radical Progressives from the Northeast and West Coast are bringing their cash and disastrous policies, flipping some areas into very "blue" - turning us into the s'holes they left behind. I must point out that the best "training" I've received in advocacy and public policy has been from Progressive organizations - Conservatives and Independents don't dedicate the time, money, resources into advocacy/public policy trainings - they need to step up and show up or we're going to lose this country to the Communists in the Progressive movement. Yes, they are Communists (there are quite a few of them in the RNC as well).
Thank you for pointing out the money trail. I wonder if the Koch Brothers can match the ginormous amount of money that George Soros donates to the radical Progressive nonprofits (and donate similar amounts to Conservative/Independent organizations).