A watchdog group that has attacked the private-equity industry is hitting up donors for contemporary funds forward of an anticipated crackdown by the Trump administration on ‘political’ nonprofits, The Post has discovered.
Sources said the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) — which outlined a mission in a current social media post to “expose abuses, bring transparency, and fight to hold this industry accountable to people, not profits” — is now scrambling for money, sources said.
Specifically, the Chicago-based group has requested supporters to donate on ‘Giving Tuesday’ forward of an expected 2026 Treasury and IRS probe of the newest tax filings by so-called 501(c)3 nonprofit teams.
“It is more like Terrified Tuesday,” said one DC insider of the outfit that is typically name-checked by left-wing firebrands such as AOC and Elizabeth Warren.
George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center has helped bankroll the Private Equity Stakeholder Project in the previous. The group is typically name-checked by left-wing Wall Street-bashing politicians. REUTERS
George Soros’s Open Society Policy Center, another nonprofit that could be in the Trump administration’s crosshairs, donated a whole of $400,000 to PESP from 2021 to 2022. The donations stopped in 2023, according to the newest obtainable filings for both outfits.
“All you have to do is look at who works at these places, their pronouns, and the sort of political activism they have been engaged in,” the source said. “They’ve handed in their homework, and now it’s going to get graded.”
A well-placed source said 501(c)3 organizations will face “heavy scrutiny” if they “blur their lines” between real advocacy and political activism. In addition to Soros’ Open Society, that could put left-wing teams, including Black Lives Matter, under the microscope, the source said.
IRS filings show that Jim Baker, PESP’s government director, rakes in $102,000 per 12 months for working a 40-hour week at the Chicago-based outfit. Jim Baker / Linkedin
Insiders pointed to Chicago-based PESP’s transfer to raise money that “would help fund potential lawsuits with the federal government.”
“The administration has a laundry list of suspects who have been using and abusing their non-profit tax status,” the source added. “No one is against political work. But you need to pay your fair share of taxes.”
Trump administration sources confirmed to The Post that a number of 501(c)3s — named after the part of the US tax code that was initially supposed to grant tax breaks to numerous nonprofits such as charities, faculties and non secular teams — are on the radar of senior officers at Treasury and the Internal Revenue Service.
Fox News reported in June how PESP staffers were vocal supporters of anti-Israel protests on faculty campuses across the nation. Getty Images
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators collect at an encampment on the garden of Columbia University. James Keivom
“We have to get it right on the first shot. Everything we do has to be iron-clad,” one individual acquainted with the matter said in a thinly veiled reference to a potential legal problem.
Indeed, one well-connected DC lobbyist, talking on situation of anonymity, warned Trump officers: “Anything that smacks of political vendetta simply won’t fly in court.”
The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service did not reply to The Post’s requests for remark.
Fox News reported in June how PESP staffers were vocal supporters of anti-Israel protests on faculty campuses across the nation, with one worker calling herself “a disciplined Communist” who loved hobbies such as “queer line dancing.”
The two surviving founders of KKR, Henry Kravis (left) and George Roberts (proper) have been dubbed as the “godfathers of private equity” for pioneering leveraged buyouts in the Nineteen Seventies, REUTERS
“Your claim that ‘PESP is bracing itself for a crackdown on non-profits’ is totally false. What is your source for this?” Sam Garin, a spokesperson for the group, said in an electronic mail response with a signature that displayed (she/they) pronouns.
Garin declined to remark further when pressed by The Post about allegations the group was “political,” instead supplying a hyperlink to a Wikipedia web page about “Giving Tuesday”.
The group’s newest obtainable annual tax submitting, which nonprofits call a 990 type, describes its mission as exhibiting how personal equity “impacts on human rights, jobs, housing, consumers and the environment.”
Its government director, Jim Baker, earns just over $102,000 per 12 months for working a 40-hour week, the same source exhibits.
Private equity corporations like Apollo Global Management, Blackstone and KKR pool money from rich shoppers, pension funds and establishments to buy underperforming firms and then flip them around to be offered for a revenue.
Critics notice that buyout corporations, in some case,s have slashed jobs to reap fats dividends for themselves, sometimes leaving firms on shaky footing.