City Hall has an in-depth, investigative look at the Working Families Party in New York, a progressive political party that endorses Democratic candidates through New York's quirky election laws that allow politicians to run on multiple party tickets.
It's not uncommon for national political entities to have separate nonprofit and PAC divisions, but the Working Families Party actually has four arms: the party itself; the nonprofit 501(c)4 Working Families Organization; the nonprofit, nonpolitical 501(c)3 Progressive America Fund, under which operate the Center for Working Families think tank and the National Open Ballot Project, an initiative to get ballot laws similar to New York's passed elsewhere in the country; and the for-profit political consulting firm Data & Field Services.
Though there are legal restrictions on how the money is supposed to flow, all list the same address in Brooklyn as their home base. (Which, to be fair, is also true of some DC-based groups that have both political and nonprofit, nonpolitical arms, and the Working Families Party says there's nothing wrong with it, either.)
Here's the graphic that City Hall uses to illustrate the finances, the use of plumbing pipes on which may or may not be a stylistic, connotative jab at labor-generated money:
I know this is superficial, but I'd be pretty ok with putting a moratorium on political organizations containing some form the word "Family" in its title. The first amendment would disagree with me, of course, but seriously, every one of these I've ever encountered has had some creepy thing going on with it. Nonetheless, I'm fairly unmoved by this issue (or whatever it's trying to be). Maybe try again when you can directly point to something substantial?
Did everyone forget that the Working Family Party is a front group for ACORN?
Isn't this how most of the major political groups operate -- on both the left and the right? I'm not an attorney but I've worked for both non-profits and on political campaigns. It seems that the point of setting up separate organizations is precisely to comply with restrictions on how differnt types of funding is raised and spent. One organization does advocacy or lobbying, a different organization does politics. These guys might have been a bit sloppy, but it seems like they're trying to do the right thing. I would guess that a similar "investigation" of, say, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce would show a similar arrangement of separate entities that work together to advance the organization's goals.
I am with Bob above, the Working Family Party association with ACORN has been out in the open for quite some time now. Not to mention the need for barney party supplies in all of these groups.