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Tides Center PO Box 29907 Bldg 1014 San Francisco, CA 94129 Phone: (415) 561-6300 Fax: (415) 561-6301 Website: http://www.tides.org Email: adavis@tides.org Description: Star-nest for left-wing causes, provides fund-raising and management services for groups that can't or won't get their own IRS tax exemption. 2004: election year flap over Democratic
presidential nominee John Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz Kerry, donating
money from her foundations to Tides Foundation and Tides Center
radical projects. The Heinz foundations gave millions to the Tides
Center and small amounts to the Tides Foundation, but all of the
money was earmarked and spent on Heinz-prescribed projects, most in
the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area where the Heinz family office is
located, and not for Tides to use for any other purpose. Tides
operates numerous radical organizations, but Heinz foundation money
has not gone to any of them. The Heinz foundations have their own
problems.
EIN
94-3213100
Board of Directors Director and shareholder, Working Assets Funding Service (a private fundraising corporation)
Ellen Friedman, Vice-president Salary $13,672 Benefits
$2,795
Total salaries paid: $16,666,394. Benefits: $1,330,556 The Tides Center began as a spinoff of the Tides Foundation. What is the Tides Foundation? It is not a private foundation, but is a public charity. It has 501(c)(3) and 509(a)(1) IRS designations, which allow it to seek contributions and distribute them where desired. It’s not a traditional foundation. It doesn’t have an endowment. Instead, people and institutions that, for one reason or another, don’t want to be publicly identified with a certain cause give money to Tides as donor-advised funds, a little-known charitable giving vehicle that allows donors to recommend uses of their donations and also to remain anonymous. Tides becomes the "fiscal agent" (money funnel) of any group that donors wish to fund or to create to fit their agenda. Tides gives the recipient shelter under its tax exemption. Tides can train new leaders and equip their organizations to stand alone or simply run a temporary ad hoc operation to fill a short-term need. Thus, Tides has created a haven for donor-selected nongovernmental organizations that, for various reasons, would rather not obtain their own tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service. In this manner Tides has nurtured literally hundreds of new groups to plague the resource class and rural communities. The Tides Foundation was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a left-wing activist in California, as a vehicle to promote social change and support new, controversial and even radical efforts. The Tides Foundation originally supported three different but related programs: 1) grants: a) grantseeking, i.e., they obtained funds from large foundations, and b) grantmaking, i.e., they spent the money on other non-profit groups; 2) projects, i.e., they created or recruited existing, startup or temporary groups to fit any social engineering agenda with donor-advised funds; and 3) management contracting, i.e., they contracted with their own projects to provide them with financial, management and program assistance. If an organization wanted to be a Tides Foundation project, essentially they turned over all of their administrative non-program activities to the Tides Foundation and paid the foundation 8% of their gross revenue. All organization employees were then employed by the Tides Foundation, provided with a benefit package and operated under the foundation’s personnel policies. All governmental filings, tax reports, and annual reports were prepared and submitted by the Tides Foundation. All legal contracts were reviewed by TF lawyers prior to their being executed. All purchases greater than $250 had to be OKed by TF program representatives before purchase. Staff hirings/firings had to be reviewed by TF representatives. TF assigned an individual to the organization to assist with day-to-day non-programmatic operations. A fundraising plan was worked out and closely monitored. Sources of potential funding from other foundations were directed toward the program by TF representatives. If the project proved effective, the group might end up with its own articles of incorporation, moving to its own offices, with its own funding sources, legitimately doing the activism it had been groomed for. The public didn’t know who paid for its grooming. The San Francisco Bay Guardian reported, "Wealthy patrons give big chunks of money to Tides—and their names are kept confidential. The Tides donation is completely tax deductible. But the donor can discreetly designate an organization that he or she wants to see receive the money—and Tides will pass the donation along, minus a small administrative fee. Often, the recipient group doesn’t know where the money really came from. And there’s no way for the public to find out either. By the end of the 1980s Tides had significantly expanded another of its tasks: providing a tax shelter to small non-profits unable or unwilling to win tax-exempt status from the federal government." Drummond Pike gained favor with John Peterson "Pete" Myers, director of the highly-focused W. Alton Jones Foundation. In 1992 Jones contributed to seven identifiable Tides donor-advised funds: $40,000 for the Student Environmental Action Coalition in Chapel Hill, North Carolina; $37,000 for Reducing Pesticide Risks Project; $30,000 for Least Cost Energy Analysis Project; $45,000 for the Nuclear Safety Campaign; $20,000 for the Project for Participatory Democracy; $15,000 to the Project for Particpatory Democracy for the Military Production Network; $20,000 for the Rural Alliance for Military Accountability. Pike also gained favor with Rebecca Rimel, president of the giant Pew Charitable Trusts (over $15 million from Pew). In 1993 alone, Pew contributed to six identifiable Tides donor-advised funds: $600,000 to manage the Pew Global Stewardship Initiative "and related grantees;" $275,000 for the Business Industrial Efficiency Initiative; $95,000 for the Environmental Working Group; $25,000 for the U.S. Network for Cairo 1994 (a temporary organization to boost the United Nations International Conference for Population and Development); $75,000 to publish a source book on the 1994 Cairo U.N. Conference; $2,872,000 for the Waste Reduction and Recycling Institute. In the early ’90s, Tides got donor-advised funds not only from Jones and Pew, but also from Columbia Foundation, the Foundation for Deep Ecology, the Richard and Rhoda Goldman Fund, the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Homeland Foundation, the James Irvine Foundation, the Roberts Foundation, the Hoffman Foundation, the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation (General Motors money), the Nathan Cummings Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, and the Bullitt Foundation. By the end of 1996 the Tides Foundation had $55.3 million in assets, most of it supporting donor-advised funds. Until 1996, the donor-advised fund projects were managed by the Tides Foundation. But to protect the Foundation from legal action that might be taken against any of those groups that might get in trouble—and more than a few harmed parties have considered lawsuits against environmentalists for ruining their lives—the Tides Center was spun off in April 1996, funded by a Tides Foundation grant of $9 million. A year later the Tides Center’s income was $38,813,246, and assets had grown to $16,080,055. It has its own tax exemption and deductible status. The legally separate Center now manages all "projects," except for seven that were retained by the Foundation due to "imminent plans" by each group to incorporate separately from Tides. The Center also operates its own philanthropy, providing grants to affiliated groups and related projects. At the turn of the century, the Center expected to be managing more than 260 projects in 28 states and five countries. More than 400 staff members will be spending $30 million annually on project management. The spin-off of the Tides Center coincided with the move of the whole Drummond Pike empire in mid-1996 to new facilities in the 55-acre Letterman Hospital complex at the Presidio of San Francisco, a former military base declared surplus by Congress and transferred to the National Park Service as part of Golden Gate National Recreation Area (now National Park). Tides Center is funded by so many giant foundations that the Foundation Center database shows 544 separate grants. The most recent twenty grants recorded are: Record 1 Record 2 Record 3 Record 4 Record 5 Record 6 Record 7 Record 8 Record 9 Record 10 Record 11 Record 12 Record 13 Record 14 Record 15 Record 16 Record 17 Record 18 Record 19 Record 20 |
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Drummond Pike,
President