9 September 2026. Bounded donor-side acquisition closed. The record supports general organizational support predating the February 2025 advocacy, but not an earmark for the Senate letters or donor approval of their wording. This lane does not equate approval, a future-payment balance, a reported payment and the recipient's accounting recognition.
What is established and what still needs alignment
| Donor-side record | Inspected state | Amount, period and purpose | Limit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Democracy Fund, Inc., 2023 Form 990-PF, Part XIV | CMA is in both the paid-during-year and approved-for-future-payment schedules | Paid row is associated in the reader/index with USD 450,000, general support; calendar 2023. Future-payment row is also general support. | PDF text is interleaved across rows. This worker has not visually verified the paid amount's alignment and does not assign the future-payment amount. Do not total the two schedules as independent awards. |
| Democracy Fund, Inc., 2024 Form 990-PF, Part XIV | CMA appears in paid-during-year continuation | Reader/index associates USD 250,000 with general support; calendar 2024. | Numerical row alignment needs a facsimile check before treating it as a fully verified payment amount. The schedule category itself is a donor report of payment, not an acquired bank transaction or proof of the recipient's use. |
| Ford grant 144432 | Complete substantive grant-detail record read | USD 200,000 approved October 2022; start October 2022, end September 2023; General Support; Regular grant; Technology and Society programme, United States funding office | Approval/term record, not cash disbursement evidence or executed conditions. |
| Ford March 2025 award | Official search-index result only | Indexed USD 400,000, General Support, March 2025 | Exact grant identifier, term and actual detailed record were not obtained. Retain discovery; no approved/paid edge from this lane. |
The [2023 Democracy Fund return](http[local research file] is a 63-page public donor copy. Relevant locators are PDF20/printed17, Part XIV grants paid, reader2118–2213; and PDF42/printed39, grants approved for future payment, reader4240–4331. PDF5 identifies calendar2023 and Democracy Fund, Inc., EIN38-3926408. The future-payment entry is a meaningful reconciliation warning: later payments could discharge an earlier commitment, but no grant identifier or instalment schedule here proves that particular linkage. Its value is therefore withheld rather than guessed from nearby interleaved numbers.
The [2024 return](http[local research file] has 56 PDF pages. Relevant locus is PDF17/printed18, Part XIV grants paid, reader1968–2067; PDF1 identifies calendar2024 and the same donor/EIN. The website upload path is not the payment date. A return's reported annual payment cannot identify the day money reached CMA or its allocation to work in February2025. No other recipient, asset holding or donor genealogy was investigated.
[Ford grant144432](http[local research file] primary-reader lines124–160, expressly supplies the approval and grant term. Its short public purpose is General Support, not a named CSAM, Senate, TAG, DV or Adalytics project. The page does not expose a reporting schedule, tranche conditions, approval veto, work-product licence or communications review right. Those rights are unacquired, not proved absent.
Ford's [indexed database result](http[local research file] supplies the later USD400,000/March2025 discovery. Opening that result returned a database heading without the grant rows; the actual More about this grantee link from grant144432 returned a reader cache miss. Finite exact-name/date/amount searches did not resolve a grant-specific identifier. No grant page was guessed, no verification challenge was attempted, and the result is not promoted to a confirmed cash receipt. If later authenticated, March approval would still postdate the February letters and would not itself establish retrospective campaign funding.
Influence interpretation and the discriminating record
General support can finance staffing, research and advocacy capacity even without a project earmark. The defensible connection is therefore resource provision to the organization, with broad purpose compatibility. The rival explanation to donor-directed Senate advocacy is that donors supported CMA's existing mission while CMA independently selected tactics. Both can coexist with donor reporting requirements; these public records do not resolve the actual decision rights. No sum across Ford approvals, Democracy Fund payment schedules and CMA annual-report revenue is offered.
The best next record is the actual general-support award agreement and instalment/recognition schedule spanning 2023–2025, matched by grant identifier to the donor's payment record and CMA's books. It would distinguish future commitments from subsequent payments and expose any reporting, approval, clawback or earmark condition. The specific Ford2025 grant identifier and a readable facsimile of the three Democracy Fund rows are narrower prerequisite gaps, not invitations to expand into unrelated funders. Root's recipient-side packet should remain the separate source for CMA income, staffing and reported delivery.
Acquisition and custody
donor-captures.json records source scopes, reader references, retained derivatives and hashes. No substantive original PDF or grant HTML was captured in this lane. Each Democracy Fund ordinary GET returned403 and was closed; the official primary PDF reader succeeded. Ford's two ordinary HTTP200 responses were human-verification shells, retained as transport evidence, not original grant data. No challenge was solved or submitted. The primary reader supplied the historical144432 record. The public index had no rows in the opened reader, and the linked grantee reader returned cache miss; those routes were not retried.
Screenshot calls for Democracy Fund2024 PDF17 and2023 PDF20/42 returned only textual references through this worker's wrapper, not viewable images. They are not visual checks. This is why numerical row alignment remains qualified. The full financial returns, unrelated portfolio entries, signed award terms, donor correspondence and bank records were not audited. No account, form, outreach, paid source, visible UI, case, visual, ZIP, current-work or forest edit occurred. Acquisition is closed for the combined forest assessment.