How does Blexit report its funding sources in IRS filings and state campaign disclosures?
Executive summary
Blexit’s financial picture is disclosed through standard nonprofit tax filings and separate political committee reports: the Blexit Foundation, as a 501(c), files IRS Form 990s that appear in public databases and record major grants and revenue sources [1] [2], while politically active arms such as the Blexit Fund (a Super PAC) report donor information to federal campaign authorities and are tracked by OpenSecrets [3]. Investigations and watchdog reporting have identified large foundation and donor-advised-fund grants listed in public records or reconstructed from filings, but some funding flows—especially those routed through donor-advised funds or affiliated organizations—can obscure ultimate sources [4] [5].
1. How Blexit’s nonprofit arm documents its funding in IRS filings
The Blexit Foundation, organized as a tax-exempt 501(c), is required to file Form 990 series returns that disclose revenue, grants received, major donors if reported on Schedule B (when applicable), and the organization’s program and governance details; those 990s are publicly available through the IRS and aggregators like ProPublica and GuideStar [1] [6] [2]. Database snapshots and third‑party services reconstruct these filings to show, for instance, grant income and whether the foundation made grants in a given year—Instrumentl’s summary notes that Blexit filed a final return as of 2023 and reported $0 in grants that year, drawing from digitized Form 990s [7]. The public 990 trail therefore reveals receipts and expenditures but, depending on how funds are routed, may not always make individual ultimate donors instantly visible in narrative coverage alone [1].
2. Big donors, foundations and donor‑advised funds: what appears on the record
Reporting by watchdog groups and nonprofit trackers has tied specific large donations to Blexit via grant records and foundation disclosures: ExposedbyCMD reported donations in 2020 from philanthropic foundations tied to wealthy conservative backers—naming the Laura and Isaac Perlmutter Foundation ($250,000) and the Thomas W. Smith family foundation ($100,000)—and noted the addition of megadonor Rebekah Mercer to Blexit’s board in 2021, assertions grounded in grant documentation and public filings compiled by those investigators [4]. The Center for Public Integrity found corporate filings indicating a $350,000 transfer to Blexit Foundation from an organization associated with the 85 Fund / Honest Elections Project, a detail that came to light through investigative cross‑checking of filings [5]. Such gifts typically surface either on Form 990 schedules or in the public reporting trails of the donor foundations and intermediary funds [1] [4] [5].
3. Political spending and donor disclosure for Blexit’s Super PACs
Separately from the charitable foundation, the Blexit Fund has operated as an outside‑spending committee (a Super PAC) and files federal campaign reports that disclose donors and expenditures to the Federal Election Commission; OpenSecrets’ profile of the Blexit Fund indicates that the committee does disclose donors and is tracked as a Super PAC in outside‑spending databases [3]. Because federal campaign law requires itemized reporting for many contributions above reporting thresholds, those donor lists are generally more transparent than some nonprofit grant flows, and researchers use FEC and OpenSecrets records to map political contributions and targeted spending [3].
4. Limits, aggregation and transparency gaps to watch for
Public 990s and FEC filings provide complementary windows—nonprofit returns show program revenues and grants while campaign filings reveal political donors—but gaps remain: donor‑advised funds, intermediary nonprofits, and merged or dissolved entities can blur the path from an original donor to the beneficiary, a pattern noted in watchdog reporting that highlights donor‑advised funds and wealthy individual donors as key backers of Blexit [4] [5]. The IRS’s bulk downloads and organization detail pages allow researchers to pull primary source returns [8] [2], but the assembled public database can require cross‑referencing to fully trace funding chains, and the available sources provided here do not include exhaustive state‑level campaign disclosure records or every Schedule B that might list contributors [8] [1].
5. Organizational affiliations and their disclosure implications
Investigative accounts and encyclopedic summaries note organizational ties—most notably reporting that Blexit Foundation and Turning Point USA announced a merger and that Blexit has been “powered” by TPUSA in past coverage—which matters because institutional relationships can shape both funding sources and how they are reported, and merged entities will reflect those changes in subsequent Form 990s or campaign registrations [9] [10] [11]. Public filings are the definitive record for disclosed revenue and contributors, but watchdogs and journalists use those filings in tandem with foundation disclosures and campaign reports to map the full picture [1] [5] [4].