![\"Avatar](\"https:\/\/prospect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/cropped-Dylan_Gyauch-Lewis_circle-80x80.png\")
by Dylan Gyauch-Lewis<\/a><\/strong> June 12, 2026 (Prospect.org)<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"San](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/prospect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/RDP-061226.jpg?fit=1200%2C800&ssl=1\")
The Revolving Door Project, a <\/em>Prospect partner, scrutinizes the executive branch and presidential power. Follow them at therevolvingdoorproject.org<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em>, Rosen is blunt: \u201cSmall dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.\u201d Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says \u201cthe old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count cards; small dollar donors today are amateurs yanking the handles of ActBlue slot machines.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n This sentiment is laid out in substantial detail, filling 31 pages across two separate documents obtained by the Prospect<\/em>. In an email exchange, Rosen confirmed the documents\u2019 legitimacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em> year!) from billionaire benefactors, one document asserts. This \u201cAbundance Capital Stack\u201d 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<\/a> surrounding alleged off-book pay for NBA star Kawhi Leonard, was not previously known as a funder of the abundance movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen told me that \u201cthe committed capital number was an estimate, and doesn\u2019t reflect active funding today,\u201d and that the total amount of actual grants \u201cis probably closer to $40M.\u201d In particular, he said that Arnold\u2019s financial commitment to abundance organizing was incorrect. Rosen did not respond to questions about whether Ballmer and Moskovitz\u2019s 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\u2019s lower figure is specifically active grants.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Read more from the Revolving Door Project<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n It is worth noting that there are two publicly announced $120 million abundance grant funds, the Abundance and Growth Fund<\/a> from Coefficient Giving (n\u00e9e Open Philanthropy) and Jennifer Pahlka\u2019s Recoding America Fund<\/a>. The former is operating over the course of three years, the latter six. Those alone would equal $64 million a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/a> to Donald Trump\u2019s inauguration and received significant regulatory relief from the Trump-controlled SEC just months later. Ripple has also donated<\/a> millions to Trump\u2019s ballroom project and has benefited from the president promising<\/a> to include the company\u2019s XRP coin in his promised \u201ccrypto reserve.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n 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<\/em>. The second document, obtained from a link embedded in the first, is Rosen and his co-founder Misha Chellam\u2019s attempt to lay out the Abundance Network\u2019s 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<\/a>, although Mr. Rosen\u2019s phone number and email address have been redacted for his privacy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abundance adherents often bristle<\/a> 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 \u201celite\u201d by choice.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In a statement, Phoenix Project executive director Jeremy Mack said that the fundraising document demonstrates that \u201cAbundance to-date is being backed by hundreds of millions of dollars from Silicon Valley\u2019s wealthiest tech elites, and they are investing heavily into a movement that will support their interests.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n ROSEN OPERATES AT THE NEXUS<\/strong> of tech titans\u2019 \u201chostile takeover\u201d of San Francisco politics through a \u201cgrey money\u201d network, documented in reporting<\/a> from The Guardian<\/em> and Mission Local. The Phoenix Project has dubbed this overlapping set of organizations and campaigns the \u201cAstroturf Network\u201d and detailed its operations in a set of reports<\/a> and a pair of influence<\/a> maps<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the fundraising document, Abundance Network itself (as opposed to the broader abundance movement of which it is a small but influential part) is receiving several million annually from tech donors. The organization has an annual budget of $8 million, split roughly evenly between the core network and five local chapters located in San Francisco, Santa Monica, Oakland, Seattle, and Burlington, Vermont. The organization also spends an additional $5 million per campaign cycle. As of the memo\u2019s writing, it had 120 \u201cdonor members\u201d who are asked to contribute between $500 and $5,000 annually through membership dues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n While there is little detail on where the remaining Abundance Network funding comes from, the description of the organization\u2019s sister outfit, CA YIMBY, offers one possibility: Silicon Valley titans. CA YIMBY\u2019s funding largely originates from \u201ctech founders: Mark Zuckerberg, Dustin Moskowitz, Patrick Collison, Ken Duda are 80%+ of the funding,\u201d the document states.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen and his allies have no need for small-dollar donations: They come to do political battle with $260 million annually from billionaire benefactors.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n Public information tells a similar story with Abundance Network, which has received funding from Chris Larsen<\/a>, who tops the list of donors<\/a> to its campaign arm, Families for a Vibrant San Francisco, as well as former Twitch.tv executive Emmett Shear, former Ripple CTO and tech founder Jed McCaleb, and the two co-founders of the messaging software firm Twilio, Jeff Lawson and John Wolthuis. Originally called Abundant SF, the organization was launched<\/a> by \u201ca network of tech families,\u201d according to The San Francisco Standard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All this money, unsurprisingly, has generated some success. The documents credit abundance organizations with having \u201cFlipped San Francisco Democratic Party, Flipped San Francisco Board of Supervisors \u2026 [and] Flipped Santa Monica City Council.\u201d The ousting of former district attorney Chesa Boudin in 2022 is celebrated in Rosen\u2019s pitch as \u201ca major accomplishment.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, many of its preferred ballot propositions have been defeated, and efforts to oust supervisor Connie Chan failed. Chan will likely be in the network\u2019s crosshairs again as she faces off with abundance darling state Sen. Scott Wiener for Speaker Emerita Nancy Pelosi\u2019s seat in the House of Representatives this fall. Rosen explicitly notes, \u201cWe built our San Francisco operation with Scott Weiner\u2019s policy and political team,\u201d referring to him on a first-name basis throughout the document. Five of the six key staff listed are Wiener-world alumni.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The document also highlights that two of the staff have close ties to former mayor London Breed, who recently came under FBI scrutiny<\/a> after two former staffers, including her onetime chief of staff, alleged<\/a> that she appointed an ally of Michael Bloomberg to a position on the city\u2019s Board of Supervisors in the hopes of obtaining a well-compensated job at the billionaire\u2019s philanthropy after leaving office. Bloomberg had been a major donor<\/a> to Breed\u2019s re-election efforts, and is one of the largest funders<\/a> of the Abundance Network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The fundraising pitch appears intent on impugning progressives, arguing that voters have been presented a choice between \u201c(A) MAGA states that are delivering progressive outcomes or (B) Blue states that are claiming progressive values but probably increasing inequality and poverty.\u201d The facts sometimes get in the way of this claim.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen notes that California has the highest poverty rate, based on the U.S. Census Bureau\u2019s state-by-state supplemental poverty measure. But the claim that MAGA states are delivering better outcomes is undercut if you look at the next three highest states on that measure: Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. The two lowest supplemental poverty rates were in Maine and Minnesota, both of which had been under Democratic trifectas until 2025.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen also claims that Mississippi \u201cwent from worst-in the nation education performance to best-in the nation,\u201d which is not remotely true. While the media has become infatuated with the so-called Mississippi miracle, Rosen heavily overstates the state\u2019s turnaround. According to Rosen\u2019s\u00a0own source<\/a>, the state improved from 49th to 21st in fourth-grade reading, a worthwhile accomplishment, but substantially different from the claim being made.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen also claims that \u201cBlue States collectively are increasingly failing at governing our public education systems,\u201d seemingly based on an article<\/a> from the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal<\/em>, which does not even assert that education systems in Democratic states are actually worse, only that red states are improving faster. U.S. News\u2019s state education ranking<\/a> puts New Jersey atop the list, with three of the top five states in K-12 education being governed by Democratic trifectas. World Population Review\u2019s data<\/a> is even better for blue states, with eight out of the top ten spots going to states with Democratic trifectas. The other two are Virginia and Pennsylvania, which have been under divided government.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cONE WAY TO THINK ABOUT ABUNDANCE NETWORK,\u201d<\/strong> Rosen writes, \u201cis [as] the liberal answer to the tech elite joining the MAGA faction.\u201d Himself a tech founder of software company Pantheon, Rosen writes about how the movement\u2019s goal is to empower tech founders to usher in \u201can era of true abundance\u201d defined by \u201cthe innovation born in Silicon Valley demonstrably improv[ing] the lives of every American.\u201d The message is undoubtedly appealing to tech billionaires with a savior complex, who are upset that the public has grown increasingly skeptical of their promises.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen, who sees the movement\u2019s aims as to \u201cretool the American system of government for the modern era,\u201d extols a decidedly anti-democratic style of governance. He breaks political spending into three categories: \u201cgambling,\u201d meaning donations to individual candidates; \u201ccard counting,\u201d meaning turning funding over to experts; and \u201cthe house,\u201d meaning creating a political edge and sustaining it over time. Rosen gives the example of overturning Roe v. Wade<\/em>, which although massively unpopular was able to be accomplished by creating and maintaining a political advantage in the courts. Abundance, as Rosen explains it, wants to be \u201cthe house,\u201d because \u201cthe big stuff has to be done this way.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n To that end, the Abundance Network is set to build a political infrastructure that can secure a toehold in government and pacify those who might rebel. Ultimately, it is the Great Man Theory of history applied to politics, with an important proviso: Great men must be protected to allow them to orchestrate social progress.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response to a question about whether he viewed abundance organizing as a counterweight to grassroots fundraising, Rosen said: \u201cHaving worked on the Howard Dean campaign, I saw that trying to raise large amounts of campaign money online, in small increments, required a simplification of political messaging that not only flattened complex issues, but turned the internet into a tool for intense and even dangerous political polarization. It was an unintended consequence of trying to counteract \u2018big money\u2019 in politics. These incentives helped turn the political internet into a cesspool, and I think it\u2019s important to try to find ways to address it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen, who sees the movement\u2019s aims as to \u201cretool the American system of government for the modern era,\u201d extols a decidedly anti-democratic style of governance.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n This framing is reinforced in the supporting document, in which Rosen and his co-founder Misha Chellam outline their read of political history. \u201cMaszlow\u2019s monsters,\u201d they write, \u201care now here: Urban conflagrations, floods, deteriorating norms, and the rebellion against elites<\/em>\u201d (emphasis added). Popular revolt against oligarchs being considered a problem comparable to cities on fire speaks volumes about the group\u2019s priorities. In Rosen and Chellam\u2019s view, the crucial problem in left-of-center politics is that business elites are not active enough, resulting in \u201celite abdication.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The pair\u2019s analysis \u201ccame out of a joint 5+ year, 100-book quest for a \u2018root disease\u2019 diagnosis for what is crippling left politics and rotting our American democracy.\u201d They spent half a decade, alongside \u201ca community of intellectuals like Ezra Klein, Jerusalem Desmas, Jen Pahlka, Steve Teles, Derek Thompson\u201d working on \u201cpiecing that analysis together via an emerging political ideology called Abundance<\/strong>\u201d (emphasis in original). The goal now is \u201coperationalizing it into a powerful political faction that drives public outcomes at scale.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Rosen declined to answer whether those thought leaders were notified they were being referenced in supplemental fundraising materials or whether they had actively worked on fundraising for Abundance Network, saying, \u201cWe have been programming with them and other high-profile supporters of the Abundance Movement since the beginning, including book events, conferences, and other gatherings and events. This is fairly typical of how non-profits operate and build their organizations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Demsas and Thompson did not respond to questions about whether they were aware their names were used in supplementary fundraising materials. (Pahlka, a board member of the Abundance Network, was not asked.) Teles said that he was not involved with the document or fundraising though was \u201chonored\u201d to have his name used, despite being unaware of it. He added that he was \u201cthrilled to see the growth of AN over time and Misha Chellam and I have been helping each other think through our various projects in this space for some time, and I think he and Zack are amazing and are doing great work.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In response to questions about the nature of Klein\u2019s relationship with the Abundance Network, a spokesperson for The New York Times<\/em>, where he works as an opinion journalist, stressed that he has \u201cno official or paid relationship with the Abundance Network or any similar group.\u201d Klein has spoken at Abundance Network events without compensation, the spokesperson said. They declined to respond to questions about the Times<\/em>\u2019 policy for opinion journalists engaging in political work and whether they or Klein were aware of his name being used in materials distributed along with a fundraising pitch.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Klein\u2019s involvement as an abundance-flavored power broker in Democratic politics has previously \u201craised internal concerns at the Times,\u201d according to reporting<\/a> from Axios.<\/p>\n\n\n\n DESPITE BLAMING THE LEFT AND RIGHT<\/strong> for their \u201chobbling\u201d of government, the pair seem more forgiving of the right. Unlike in the book Abundance<\/em>, which does not discuss corporate power (something co-author Ezra Klein has stated<\/a> retrospectively should have been included), Chellam and Rosen do invoke it, insisting that corporate power has not been exercised robustly enough<\/em> in our political and civic institutions. \u201cFor the right, and corporate power, [the attack on Government] was a dereliction,\u201d as business leaders withdrew from civic leadership. \u201cElite responsibility,\u201d the document adds later, \u201cis a key element of abundance. Those who modernized our economic institutions for the 21st century must be key contributors to modernizing our public institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The historical analysis is centered on the claim that industrialists were in fact truly responsible for progressive victories of the mid-20th century. \u201cThe progressive movement scaled power only when industrialists brought their financial and social capital to bear on the institutional problems blocking progress.\u201d It cites the Progressive Era as a model, but makes no mention of the labor movement. It lauds Nathan Straus, the founder of Macy\u2019s, for improving food safety by pushing through laws requiring milk pasteurization, but there is no mention of the more expansive Pure Food and Drug Act or the muckraking journalism (like The Jungle<\/em> by Upton Sinclair) that created a popular political base for reform. It contains no mention of monopolies except a single passing reference to \u201ctrustbusters\u201d as one element of the progressive movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n In short, their view of the Progressive Era, which was in large part a reaction against the concentrated power of wealthy industrialists, cuts out most of the progressive parts and nearly all of the work done by ordinary people organizing grassroots movements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Given the document\u2019s purpose\u2014soliciting donations from Silicon Valley\u2019s modern robber barons who deeply feared and resented Joe Biden\u2019s trust-busting\u2014these conspicuous absences may have been an attempt to soothe the egos of prospective donors. It may have also been excluded to reconcile this history with the ideological assumptions that elites are a fundamentally positive force in society. Because if that supposition were untrue, well, why would we all get out of their way?<\/p>\n\n\n\n At a time when resistance to AI data centers and economic populism are powering politics, Abundance Network is telling its donors that they can rebuild the Democratic Party in a more billionaire-positive vision. Despite calling the movement \u201cdemocratic\u201d and repeatedly talking about the need for \u201cbottom-up\u201d organizing, what Rosen and company clearly want is a political infrastructure that reorients politics away from anger at economic elites. Despite reassurances otherwise, abundance certainly appears to be an attempt to steer Democrats away from class war and toward renewing the party\u2019s vows in its increasingly unhappy<\/a> marriage<\/a> between the party and the tech sector.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Abundance Network documents:<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\n\n\n\n![\"The](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/prospect.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/Revolving-Door-Project.jpg?resize=500%2C569&ssl=1\")
<\/figure>\n\n\n\n\n
\n
\n\n\n\n