Stacey Abrams-Founded Nonprofit Fined $300K for Campaigning for Her in 2018

Stacey Abrams-Founded Nonprofit Fined $300K for Campaigning for Her in 2018

New Georgia Project, a nonprofit founded by Stacey Abrams, must pay the largest campaign violation fine in Georgia after admitting it illegally campaigned for her 2018 gubernatorial run.

The New Georgia Project is filed under two federal tax designations. It cannot engage in politics as a 501(c)3, but it’s also a 501(c)4. That designation allows it to use half of its work for politicking.

Abrams created the New Georgia Project in 2014. It is “an offshoot of another Abrams-founded nonprofit called Third Sector Development.”

Abrams left a leadership role in 2017 when she first ran for governor.

Sen. Raphael Warnock (D-GA) served as chair from 2017 to January 2020, when he began a Senate campaign.

Interesting: Abrams brought the project a ton of money after she claimed voter suppression led to her defeat in 2018.

The investigation began in 2019.

The New Georgia Project group will pay $300,000. From the Atlanta-Journal Constitution:

Under a consent order approved by the State Ethics Commission on Wednesday, the New Georgia Project admitted it raised and spent millions of dollars to support Abrams’ unsuccessful campaign without registering as an independent political committee and disclosing its activities, as required by state law. It also supported the campaigns of other Democratic candidates that year, as well as the unsuccessful 2019 Gwinnett County MARTA referendum.

In all, the New Georgia Project and an affiliated group, the New Georgia Project Action Fund, admitted to 16 violations of state campaign finance laws.

The AJC noted that the group denied anything illegal for four years.

The New Georgia Project even “mocked the investigation as a politically motivated ‘fishing expedition.'”

What a turnaround because “it admitted to every allegation the commission had leveled against it.”

Warnock helmed the group during the infractions. His office said “compliance decisions were not a part of that work.”

In November 2023, Politico published its findings into the New Georgia Project after a six-month investigation.

From the 2023 report:

The move comes as the group’s tax filings indicate that its former executive director — who was hand-picked by Abrams in 2014 but fired last year without notice — owes the organization thousands of dollars in “non-work-related” reimbursements. The former director, Nsé Ufot, who left the group last year after heading it for eight years, denies owing money and calls the allegation “a fucking lie.”

The debt attributed to Ufot — a nationally recognized leader in voting rights efforts and frequent political commentator — is one of multiple instances of poor financial record-keeping and allegations of misuse of funds uncovered by POLITICO. The New Georgia Project didn’t properly track company expenses that were allegedly prepaid to employees on Visa gift cards and failed to account for salary advances and other expenditures, according to a review of financial disclosures, internal documents and interviews with 12 current and former employees, including senior leadership. Most were granted anonymity to discuss sensitive internal matters.

The organization has also been fending off other administrative battles, including a state ethics investigation over whether its election advocacy violated rules limiting direct political activity by nonprofits, which it has sued to terminate, and a dispute with the IRS over payment of payroll taxes, which the group’s new CEO, Kendra Davenport Cotton, said has recently been settled.

Anonymous former and current staffers (at least at the time) described the chaos behind the scenes, including how hardly anyone prepaid with the $11,000 Visa cards brought back receipts and no one kept track to ensure people used the gift cards for only work expenses.

“I do understand now why the pushback against [a more accountable gift-card system] and I think when things are in chaos, it makes it easier to act in a way that you aren’t held accountable,” the former C-suite employee told Politico.

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