Secret anti-wind farm Alliance fundraising bared

How "Profiles in Courage" became "Profiles in Fundraising"
And how our Big Oil rich neighbors decide our future energy needs

By Walter Brooks

How do you ask someone to donate a million bucks to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound to keep up their fight against Jim Gordon’s Cape Wind proposal?

This is the cover of the 20 page, glossy promotion piece accompanying "Profiles in Fundraising". Here is a link to the 20 page Sales Promotion piece.

Thanks to documents recently made available on the website of the Alliance’s professional fundraisers, the answer to that and many other questions about how the Alliance operates are now available to the public, or at least as long as The  Alliances allows the public to see them.

Ironically the document is entitled, "Profiles in Fundraising". The reader has to hope they weren't trying to steal the title of John F. Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage", but the temptation must have been too great.

Since this story was published at 7 am this morning, The Alliance has taken down the web site to prevent the public from reading it.

We have been sent complete copies by people who saw the site before it was taken down, and we make those available here to anyone who wishes to read it in its entirety. Until then here are the salient points.

Community Counseling Service, one of the largest professional fundraising organizations for non-profit organizations has, amazingly enough, posted several internal documents about the fundraising tactics of their client, the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound on their public website.

Most interesting is the Prospectus the Alliance gives to their big donor prospects, a 20-page document in which the Alliance is dressed to impress.  

Cape project's foes tap big spenders.
Read Michael Levenson's story on the fundraising in Saturday's Boston Globe here.

Given what is happening in Washington, D.C. right now with the Congressman Don Young Amendment which will stop Cape Wind and every other proposed offshore wind farm, their list of “significant achievements� is interesting, here are some examples:

• “Successfully introduced supportive language into the House Coast Guard authorization bill;â€�
• “Arranged a meeting with UK Coastguard staff and US Coast Guard Commandant’s staff on radar issues;â€�
• “Briefed regional Coast Guard leadership in Providence and Boston on radar issues and UK standards.â€�

If one lobbyist is good, four are even better

So proud is the Alliance about their coup in getting their language into a Coast Guard Bill they mention it again and again throughout the documents, here is another example where we also get a taste of just how much money they are hauling in:

• “In 2005, a major fundraising campaign with an end of summer target of $7.5 million and a year-end target of $10 million is essential to build upon our success in championing language in the upcoming Coast Guard Bill…â€�

How did the Alliance pull that off?  Here’s their answer: “We have obtained the services of four of the top lobbying firms in Washington DC, which are actively working with various Congressional committees on our behalf.â€�

Koch and Yearley represent Big Oil

Not surprisingly, the biggest gift to the Alliance reported in these documents, is a 2005 gift of $1.1 million dollars from oil and coal billionaire Bill Koch, who deserves some credit of his own for getting that anti-offshore wind energy language into the Coast Guard Bill.  This million is on top of the $60,000 he gave his lobbyist to help with the same legislation.

The documents also credit Koch and Alliance Board Member Doug Yearley for helping Alliance staff in soliciting donations from others.  (Doug Yearley is the former CEO of mining giant Phelps Dodge, he currently still serves on the Board of Directors of Marathon Oil).

Who else donates to the Alliance to Protect Nantucket Sound?

This excerpt is one of many to stand out:

"The Alliance has received 28 gifts of $100,000 or more since January 2004. In 2005 they received a $1.1 million commitment from Board Chairman, Bill Koch.  Donors in 2005 who have publicly announced their gifts include: Frank and Maureen Wilkens: $350,000; Paul Fireman: $250,000; and Mike Egan: $150,000.  The majority of the Alliance's donors wish to remain anonymous due to the controversial nature of the issue.  The largest anonymous donation is $850,000, with an additional $1 million request still pending from this same donor.  "

These documents reveal that 94% of their donations come from major donors who donate between $20,000 and $1,000,000.  These major Alliance donors are described as “property or business owners on the Cape and Islands, and most of them are seasonal.â€�  So if you thought the big-money summer crowd was financing the Alliance, you are apparently not wrong.

Getting back to the question posed at the beginning – just how do you ask someone to donate a cool million to the Alliance?

Environmental work wasn't the "pitch"

For starters, don’t talk about clean renewable energy or its benefits, instead talk only about factories and industrialization and use highly emotive language to describe Nantucket Sound, raising it to a plane of the most cherished and sacred public wilderness in the United States. 

Here are some examples of the type of language that the Alliance uses in their pitch:

• “Cape Wind… would desecrate a national treasureâ€�
• “…our drive to ensure Nantucket Sound remains an unblemished jewel for future generationsâ€�
• “…to achieve our goal of stopping Cape Wind and preserving Nantucket Sound for future generationsâ€�
• “It is for this purpose that we make a significant request to you for an additional leadership gift to the Alliance. At this time, we would like you to consider a gift of $1,000,000 to the Alliance’s 2005-06 campaign for the benefit of the projects outlined in this proposal. Your gift will help to ensure the future of Nantucket Sound as a pristine body of water rather than a home to America’s first off-shore industrial wind power plant.â€�

The documents also reveal that all the Alliance’s spin about being the “Nantucket Sound Waterkeeperâ€� is just that, spin.  Their waterkeepers efforts get comparatively little funding to their lobbying, legal and advertising costs devoted to defeating Cape Wind.  They even acknowledge the purpose of the Waterkeeper program is to “Reposition the Allianceâ€�.

The documents are amusing at times, when they describe the play by play action that Alliance staff Charles Vinick and Susan Nickerson should use when sitting down in the home of a major donor prospect.

The first paragraph of the report states: ...The goals of the organization are to:

• Overcome the proposed power plant project through political and legal efforts
• Identify and promote appropriate alternatives to meet our energy needs while preserving Nantucket Sound
• Work to enact federal legislation that establishes a sensible national framework for offshore development
• Achieve protected sanctuary status for Nantucket Sound through the Alliance’s official recognition as “Soundkeeperâ€� of the Nantucket Sound marine region by the international Waterkeeper Alliance

The "solicitors"

If you are interested in giving, these are the contacts named on page one of the "Profiles in Fundraising":

• Charles Vinick CEO, Lead Solicitor
• Susan Nickerson Executive Director, Major Gift Solicitor
• Bill Koch Chairman of the Board of Directors, Occasional Solicitor
• Mike Egan Board Member, 2004 Campaign Chairman, Occasional Solicitor
• Doug Yearley Past CEO, Occasional Solicitor Al Kaneb Occasional Solicitor

Every one should have an "occasional" contributor like billionaire, oil man Bill Koch.
Here is a link to the 20 page Sales Promotion piece.
Here is a link to the CCS "Profiles in Fund Raising".
Here is Jack Coleman's analysis of the fundraising.