The American Prospect reports:

According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: “Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.” Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says “the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.”

This sentiment is laid out in substantial detail, filling 31 pages across two separate documents obtained by the Prospect. In an email exchange, Rosen confirmed the documents’ legitimacy.

Rosen and his allies have no need for small-dollar donations or mass-membership politics: They come to do political battle with $260 million annually (yes, each year!) from billionaire benefactors, one document asserts. This “Abundance Capital Stack” is being deployed to organize in all 50 states and consists of a $120 million annual commitment from ex-hedge fund manager and current Meta board member John Arnold, $40 million from Facebook/Meta co-founder Dustin Moskovitz, and $100 million from Steve Ballmer, the L.A. Clippers owner and former Microsoft executive. Ballmer, who is currently embroiled in a scandal surrounding alleged off-book pay for NBA star Kawhi Leonard, was not previously known as a funder of the abundance movement.

Rosen told me that “the committed capital number was an estimate, and doesn’t reflect active funding today,” and that the total amount of actual grants “is probably closer to $40M.” In particular, he said that Arnold’s financial commitment to abundance organizing was incorrect. Rosen did not respond to questions about whether Ballmer and Moskovitz’s funding figures were incorrect as well, or what a more accurate number for Arnold would be. There was no explanation offered for the discrepancy between the estimate in the fundraising pitch and his smaller estimate, although the memo discusses capital commitments, whereas Rosen’s lower figure is specifically active grants.

It is worth noting that there are two publicly announced $120 million abundance grant funds, the Abundance and Growth Fund from Coefficient Giving (née Open Philanthropy) and Jennifer Pahlka’s Recoding America Fund. The former is operating over the course of three years, the latter six. Those alone would equal $64 million a year.

In addition, the network has received significant donations from Michael Bloomberg, the billionaire former Republican mayor of New York City, and Chris Larsen, co-founder of cryptocurrency firm Ripple. Larsen has been a major donor to Democrats in the past, but his company donated nearly $5 million to Donald Trump’s inauguration and received significant regulatory relief from the Trump-controlled SEC just months later. Ripple has also donated millions to Trump’s ballroom project and has benefited from the president promising to include the company’s XRP coin in his promised “crypto reserve.”

The first document, a funding pitch for abundance organizing in California for prospective high-net-worth donors, was obtained by Bay Area political watchdog The Phoenix Project and provided to the Prospect. The second document, obtained from a link embedded in the first, is Rosen and his co-founder Misha Chellam’s attempt to lay out the Abundance Network’s view of modern American political history. The memos are undated, but The Phoenix Project obtained one of them in February and Rosen told me they were both from 2025. Both are available to read below, although Mr. Rosen’s phone number and email address have been redacted for his privacy.

Abundance adherents often bristle at the suggestion that the project is orchestrated by Silicon Valley elites. But as the leaked documents demonstrate, Rosen and his colleagues clearly view it as such, and even frequently use the word “elite” by choice.

In a statement, Phoenix Project executive director Jeremy Mack said that the fundraising document demonstrates that “Abundance to-date is being backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from Silicon Valley’s wealthiest tech elites, and they are investing heavily into a movement that will support their interests.” [Continue reading…]