Alaska Story Investigation: The progressive dark-money pipeline fueling radical candidate Bill Hill

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Aug. 4, 2026 – Independent congressional candidate Bill Hill is being supported by more than $2 million in outside spending from Wheel Dog PAC, a Washington, DC-based super PAC whose funding trail runs through a tight circle of national leftist dark-money organizations.

Digging through the FEC filings surrounding Hill shows just how tight that circle of dark money really is.

Two of Wheel Dog PAC’s largest nonprofit funders  — Contours Inc. and the Global Impact Social Welfare Fund — are not independent sources of money. Global Impact Social Welfare Fund, or GISWF, is itself the principal known funder of Contours. They are one and the same.

GISWF’s federal tax filing for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2025, reports a $6.62 million grant to Contours, designated simply as “program support.” It was the second-largest grant listed on GISWF’s Schedule I.

Then, in 2026, both organizations sent money to Wheel Dog PAC:

• Contours contributed $300,000 on May 4.
• GISWF contributed $250,000 on June 4.
• The Sixteen Thirty Fund contributed another $400,000 on May 20.

That means the three nonprofit transfers totaling $950,000 are not as separate as they initially appear. At least $550,000 came directly from GISWF or from an organization that GISWF had funded with $6.62 million.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund, a prominent progressive dark-money organization historically associated with the Arabella Advisors network, has also helped fund GISWF. Publicly available grant records show Sixteen Thirty has contributed more than $2.3 million to GISWF over time. GISWF, in turn, granted $625,000 back to Sixteen Thirty during the fiscal year ending in 2025. The Sixteen Thirty Fund has been active in shaping Alaska politics for several years. This year, Sixteen Thirty is also funding the opposition to the repeal of ranked-choice voting.

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The money is circulating within an interconnected radical leftist nonprofit structure before emerging as political spending for Bill Hill in Alaska.

Wheel Dog PAC reported three large transfers as “other federal receipts,” rather than ordinary contributions. That reporting method is allowed, but it makes the funding stream less obvious to anyone scanning the committee’s standard list of contributors.

The PAC then turned the money into a full-scale Alaska campaign.

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Federal Election Commission records show Wheel Dog PAC has reported approximately $2.17 million in independent expenditures supporting Hill through July 29. That includes about $784,000 identified as mailers, along with television, radio and digital advertising and text-message campaigns.

Alaskans recently began receiving the latest glossy Wheel Dog mail piece. FEC reports show two mail expenditures totaling nearly $175,000 on July 27 and 28 alone. Earlier mail campaigns ranged from about $60,000 to more than $107,000 per expenditure. This is a remarkable expenditure for a candidate who came out of nowhere. Hill is from Naknek, Alaska, and has no known previous political base in the state.

The PAC also reported a $226,584 television ad buy, nearly $163,000 for one digital ad buy and tens of thousands of dollars for radio and advertising production.

Wheel Dog PAC is legally independent of Hill’s campaign and may not legally coordinate its activities with the candidate. But it is performing many of the expensive functions normally handled by a candidate’s operation: statewide mail, television, radio, digital advertising and voter-contact programs.

Wheel Dog’s website is devoted to Hill. It calls him “the only candidate who can beat Nick Begich” and says he can “take back” Alaska’s congressional seat. It looks like the candidate’s website.

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Contours, one of the organizations supplying the money, appears to have been constructed for just this kind of political financing.

It was formed in Delaware in December 2024 and recognized by the IRS as a 501(c)(4) organization last October. The organization has disclosed little publicly beyond a sparse website saying it works to give voters “greater voice and choice.” Its two named projects — the Regional States Initiative and The Independents Project — appear to have no meaningful independent public presence.

Contours’ donation page, processed through the leftist Democracy Engine, starts with a $1,000 suggested contribution, which is not the profile of an organization building a broad grassroots base.

Contours is headed by Sarah Stremlau. She is philanthropy consultant who previously ran fiscal-sponsorship operations at Arabella Advisors. Contours had less than $50,000 in revenue in 2024 before receiving the $6.62 million GISWF grant and rapidly becoming a major political funding intermediary.

In addition to its $300,000 transfer to Wheel Dog PAC, Contours has reportedly sent at least $2.9 million to Government That Works PAC, $800,000 to Independent Candidates Action, $150,000 to Working Class Heroes Fund and $300,000 to Fire House PAC. Working Class Heroes Fund is one of the major donors to the Bill Hill campaign.

The recurring theme is support for Democratic candidates or nominally independent candidates positioned to advance progressive interests.

Government That Works PAC subsequently transferred $3.75 million to Lone Star Rising PAC, which supports Texas Democratic congressional candidate James Talarico. Through June 30, Government That Works had raised approximately $15.29 million, with just $8,000 coming from individual contributions. Nearly all the rest arrived through nonprofit or other non-contribution accounts.

Contours has also appeared in funding structures supporting independent candidates in other states, including spending connected to Nebraska Senate candidate Dan Osborn and Montana political operations.

The organization’s first detailed Form 990 will provide more information about its officers, contractors and organizational relationships, but not necessarily its donors. That return won’t become public until after the November election. But the pattern has emerged that the playbook for the unknown Bill Hill is one that is being used elsewhere in the country.

GISWF is larger, older and far better financed.

The organization is the 501(c)(4) advocacy arm of Global Impact Ventures and shares an address with Global Impact, a longstanding nonprofit federation involved in workplace giving and the federal government’s Combined Federal Campaign.

GISWF reported rapid revenue growth: approximately $22.5 million in fiscal year 2023, $43.6 million in 2024 and $59.5 million in 2025. Its latest filing reports $47.1 million in grants and approximately $6.4 million in political-campaign expenditures to 12 organizations organized under section 527 of the tax code.

Those recipients included $1.1 million to Justice Project PAC, $1 million to CFFE PAC, $1 million to PAC for America’s Future and $935,000 to Retire Career Politicians.

Yet the original donors behind most GISWF money remain hidden.

Because GISWF is a 501(c)(4), its publicly released tax return does not disclose its full donor list. Available nonprofit databases trace only a fraction of the roughly $126 million the organization received during its past three fiscal years.

The identifiable grants include money from Global Impact itself and more than $2.3 million from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, but most of GISWF’s revenue cannot be traced to its original source through public federal records.

That secrecy continues through Contours. GISWF, whose own donors are mostly undisclosed, gave $6.62 million to Contours. Contours, another nonprofit that does not disclose its donors, then transferred $300,000 to Wheel Dog PAC. Wheel Dog used the money to promote Bill Hill to Alaska voters.

The structure can be followed, but the original source of most of the money cannot.

There is also an unmistakable Arabella connection.

Arabella Advisors changed its name in November 2025, around the same period Contours began to emerge. Arabella’s fiscal-sponsorship services business was converted into Sunflower Services, a new public-benefit corporation financed by the New Venture Fund (an Arabella spinoff), with additional backing from the Windward and Hopewell funds (also Arabella spinoffs). Those nonprofits have been major members of the network historically serviced by Arabella and active in Alaska with political money.

The Sixteen Thirty Fund was not part of the announced Sunflower transaction, but it remains connected to this Alaska funding stream through its direct $400,000 transfer to Wheel Dog PAC and its prior support of GISWF.

Contours’ emergence during that reorganization, under the direction of a former Arabella fiscal-sponsorship executive, fits the appearance of a political funding network being reconfigured time and again into newer and less recognizable entities.

Hill’s official campaign has plenty of its own money. Bill Hill for Alaskans reported $1.17 million in receipts through June 30 and still had more than $702,000 available. How he was able to suddenly raise that money is a mystery.

But even that money is overwhelmingly from Outside.

An analysis of approximately $916,000 in itemized individual contributions for which the FEC identified a state shows only about $221,000 came from Alaska. Approximately $695,000 — nearly 76% — came from elsewhere.

California donors gave $217,207, almost exactly as much as Alaska donors. New York supplied another $142,076, followed by Massachusetts, Maryland, Washington state and other Outside locations.

Hill describes himself as an independent, but Democrats and progressive organizations have consolidated behind him since Democratic candidate Matt Schultz suspended his campaign and endorsed Hill.

His endorsements include the Alaska AFL-CIO, National Education Association, End Citizens United, The Alaska Center and numerous Democratic or Democrat-aligned elected officials.

The campaign’s branding is Alaskan: Wheel Dog PAC, commercial fishing, working families and Bristol Bay.

The financing is something else entirely. It’s not Alaskan.

It starts with unidentified donors, moves through organizations such as GISWF, Contours and the Sixteen Thirty Fund, lands in a Washington super PAC and emerges in Alaska mailboxes as an appeal to elect an “independent” congressman.

Bill Hill may be the candidate pictured on the mailers, but the financial machinery pulling his campaign is national, far left, and largely hidden from the voters in Alaska.

There’s  much more to this story. Check back with The Alaska Story for follow-ups that show who is funding Bill Hill.

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