Reports say that Senator Bernie Sanders sent his wife’s nonprofit institute $200,000 from his campaign funds, even though the organization seems to accomplish very little. The organization pays her son a six-figure salary.
According to filings with the Federal Election Commission, the independent senator’s committee donated $100,000 to the Sanders Institute in January and March. Sanders’s campaign has given the most money to any group in this election cycle with these payments.
The institute was created in 2017 as a think tank to support progressive perspectives and was co-founded by Jane O’Meara Sanders and her stepson, David Driscoll. The institute reported spending $159,885 on The Timeline Project in 2021, calling it a “policy-focused resource based on Bernie Sanders’ work over four decades.” Nearly $89k was spent on a news website, the same for social media and content production, and $17,765 was set aside for a conference canceled because of the epidemic.
There seems to be nothing to show for the substantial resources invested in these programs by the institution. There is no “policy-focused resource” on the site, as claimed for the most expensive part of the program, and the fellows’ blog articles are mostly reposts. Only two films, both featuring colleagues like Democratic Washington State Representative Pramila Jayapal, have been posted on the institute’s YouTube channel so far this year.
Despite Jane Sanders’s initial promises that her institution would provide financial backing to other progressive groups, it has failed to do so. In its tax returns for the year 2021, the charity did not list any donations to other liberal organizations. Fox News Digital’s key funding sources have been identified for the year covered by the most current available financial filings.
According to the FEC database, in April of 2021, the 2020 presidential campaign for Sen. Sanders donated $350,000 to the institution. Based on its tax returns, Wend II Inc.’s nonprofit organization reported allocating $250,000 to increase its “content capacity” in the given year. About 84% of the $716,000 the Sanders Institute received in 2021 came from only two donors.
