At Bitter Budget Battle, DSA/Non-Profit Guy Shakes His Money Rattle – by Travis Mateer

Yesterday’s Budget and Finance Committee meeting lasted over 5 hours, but it was a public comment made in just the first 15 minutes that got my attention.

Why?

Because, as you will see, no one can make the word “values” sound like an extortion racket like a non-profit/DSA foot-soldier:

Dylan Wells works for the Front Step Community Land Trust, one of Missoula’s MANY non-profits that must follow certain rules in order to maintain their tax-exempt status, but those rules are admittedly “murky”, which is why a non-profit that helps non-profits (Headwaters Foundation) provides information like this:

Lobbying can be a powerful tool to advance your mission and amplify the voices of the communities you serve. But nonprofits often find themselves navigating a murky area between advocacy and compliance. “Can we say this?” “Will this jeopardize our tax-exempt status?” If this sounds familiar, you’re not alone! Nonprofit leaders across the country share these concerns. The good news is that nonprofits can engage in lobbying, as long as they follow the rules.

…

Tax-exempt nonprofits can lobby, but the IRS says it cannot be a “substantial part” of a nonprofit’s activities. What does “substantial” mean? Unfortunately, the IRS doesn’t give a clear answer, which is why many nonprofits who wish to lobby choose to file for the 501(h) election.

Yeah, sure, “rules” exist, but what I’m going to show today is that the rules don’t stop the incestuous nature of Missoula’s non-profit scene in any meaningful way, starting with Dylan Wells and his work with the DSA:

While most readers will naturally focus on the content, it’s the location of these DSA meetings that one must scrutinize, since “Goodworks” is a Mary Stranahan project, and Sparkplug Mary is ALL OVER Missoula’s non-profit ecosphere.

…is the founder of Goodworks Ventures and the High Stakes Foundation. As a result of attending a Play Big Session about a decade ago, she made the decision to leverage her resources to support the people making a positive change in Montana. Her focus is on triple bottom line investments in the for profit arena and rural economic development, leadership development and environmental policy issues in the nonprofit arena. A passionate lover of place, she has a wicked backspin on her tennis game.

I found Mary Stranahan’s name most recently on the 990 form for A Better Big Sky, the Stacie Anderson dark money political slush fund feeding other non-profits, like Forward Montana and MontPIRG.

Going back to Front Step Community Land Trust, where young Dylan works, a name from their 990 form (when they operated under the name North Missoula Community Development Corporation) got my attention, since Alice Boyer ALSO works for Forward Montana, and recently tried to out-queer a critic of their “non-profit” political influence campaign:

Forward Montana and MontPIRG both work specifically with young people, and young people are particularly susceptible to DSA outreach, which is why it probably seems like a natural fit for Sophie Moon to work at MontPIRG while ALSO being a proud member of the DSA:

While Sophie Moon is passionate about young people and serving wine (a dangerous pairing if those young people are under the age of 21), it’s the honing of “communication skills” I’m more interested in, since the question of how our local officials communicate ended up being a big part of yesterday’s budget conversation when one of Bob Campbell’s half-dozen budget amendments focused on defunding the Mayor’s social media enhancement allocation:

All this talk about communication, social media, and money as speech in this post-Citizens United information landscape is pretty useless, if you ask me, when First Amendment protections no longer apply, and for me they don’t.

Another part of Bob Campbell’s effort at “cost saving” yesterday focused on my former employer, the Poverello Center, and the program that I was the first coordinator of, the Homeless Outreach Team, but it’s not the drama that played out between Bob and Emily Bentley that raised my eye-brow, it’s what I found when I went to look for the Pov’s board of directors, which is no longer available at their main website.

I wonder why?

Adrienne Tranel?

Yes, Adrienne Tranel has been on my radar since I looked into her husband, Ben Davis, and his desire to politically pivot from “helping the children” after leaving his private security work with a guy named Matt Epstein and a former spook named Janice. Oh, and Adrienne’s sister, Monica Tranel, lives up Pattee Canyon, unlike Rob “China lover” Chaney, who I mistakingly said was another notable Pattee Canyon resident when his residence is in the other notable Missoula neighborhood, the Rattlesnake, where Missoula’s billionaire, Denny Washington, has a home (thanks for the correction, Pete!)

What I’m doing by mapping out the influence of the this non-profit/political/government nexus of incestuous influence COULD be of interest to conservatives in Montana if they weren’t so pathetically inept in waging counter-information-ops against their better armed, slicker styled adversaries and their largely successful approach to mind-fucking economic captives of today’s Polymarket economy.

For evidence of this ineptitude, here’s Jake Eaton talking on X about conservatives getting daily trounced by the Daily Montanan, Montana Free Press, and other media platforms that overpower the political right, especially with their talk-radio guy, Aaron Flint, going full MAGA for a job in the swamp.

Instead of writing to benefit conservatives, I write to educate locals, and it’s this dedication to keeping a local focus that I think will have increasing value as I work on protecting my First Amendment ability to do what I’ve been doing since 2010. If you would like to help out with that pro se effort, my new GoFundMe page will happily take your digital dollars.

Thanks for reading!