Shelter JH — the local hinge

Every flow and relationship

Why this one organisation matters more than its budget

Shelter JH raised $129,000 in contributions in 2024 and takes twenty to twenty-five thousand a year in membership dues. It is small. It is also the point where a national funding structure becomes a local endorsement — and where the disclosure regime stops working.

1. The same Sheridan 501(c)(4) funds it and funds the PACs

Western Futures Fund gave Shelter JH $70,000 in 2023. That is the same organisation that gave Way Back PAC $2,275,000, Wyoming Way PAC $210,000 — its only funding ever, both cycles — the Wyoming Donor Alliance $75,000, and Better Wyoming $50,000. One funder, five layers of the same race: the committee that paid the candidates, the committee that paid their consultant’s firms, the organisation that endorsed them, the donor network whose director chaired that organisation, and the statewide advocacy group.

2. It is the Wyoming franchise of a ten-state campaign

Arnold Ventures’ 501(c)(4), Action Now Inc, made ten housing grants totalling $3,491,040 in 2025 — and every single grantee is a state or local pro-supply advocacy organisation. Not one builds anything. Greater Greater Washington, Open New York, Abundant Housing Massachusetts, Texans for Housing, Neighbors for More Neighbors, Gem State Housing Alliance, Boldly Forward Colorado — and Shelter JH, at $250,000, “to expand grantee’s capacity to support pro-housing policies in Wyoming.” The purpose lines are near-identical boilerplate across all ten.

3. Neither Jackson foundation funds it

The Storer Foundation gives it nothing — housing is not a Storer program area, and no Shelter JH grant appears in any accessible year. The Wyss Foundation gives it nothing — its Jackson money is human services. Its funding comes from Sheridan and from Houston.

4. The disclosure gap

Shelter JH is a 501(c)(4), not a PAC. It files a Form 990. It must disclose its grants out, its officers and its revenue totals. It need not name a single donor — and since Rev. Proc. 2018-38 most non-c3 exempt organisations do not report donor names to the IRS at all.

5. The endorsement, and the contradiction inside it

In 2026 it endorsed Karyn Chin and Ali Dunford and recommended Luther Propst — the organisation’s own distinction. Propst cast the sole no vote on the Northern South Park plan for 1,437 units on 19 May 2025. An affordable-housing organisation placed its lone no-voter in a lower tier and gave a reason unrelated to that vote. Two readings fit: a genuine reservation, or a device preserving deniability on the mission contradiction. Only the endorsement records settle it.

All three won. Way Back PAC — funded by the same Sheridan c4 — then paid all three directly, $2,500 to Chin and $1,500 each to Propst and Dunford, the last two landing thirteen days before the vote. Keep Jackson Whole, formed twelve days before the vote and chaired by the Storer Foundation’s chief executive, advocated for the same three.

Open questions

1. What was “State Bill Organizer”? JHCA gave Clare Stumpf that title in 2019. Organising around Wyoming state legislation puts her in the same room as legislators named elsewhere in this record — Michael Yin, a CLI alumnus himself, and Liz Storer, elected in 2022. What that role actually was, and which bills and coalitions it covered, is not established here.
2. Shelter JH’s own Forms 990, every year. Part VII names officers and directors year by year; Schedule O carries narrative that sometimes names a management contractor. Neither has been read in full here.
3. The full endorsement record, 2020 to 2026. Set it beside the funding timeline — Western Futures Fund in 2023, Arnold in 2025, statewide expansion in 2025 — and see whether the slate changes shape after the money arrives.
4. Is Shelter JH one of WYCEN’s twenty-six partners? The Wyoming Civic Engagement Network took $955,000 from the Storer Foundation and publishes no partner roster. If Shelter JH is inside it, there IS a Storer connection — indirect, but real. One email to the network’s director.
5. The Mountain Movement partnership. A September 2023 Shelter JH newsletter said “There may be a partnership between Shelter and MMS in the future, so stay tuned!” Did it happen?
6. Earlier and later grantors. The two known grants were found by reading funders’ returns. Run the same check against every c4 in the network file — Middle Fork Strategies, Western States Strategies, the national layer — for a Shelter JH line.

Resolved

CLARE STUMPF IS A CONFIRMED CLI GRADUATE. The Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance published her on 6 March 2019 under the byline “By Clare Stumpf – CLI Grad & State Bill Organizer”; the post now returns a 404 but the byline survives in the search index. Independently, JHCA’s own annual report places her on a CLI team that launched the 2018 “Save the Block” campaign, quoting her directly. She is the fifth documented CLI graduate in this record — after David Sollitt, Michael Yin, Nikki Kaufman and Ali Dunford.

ALI DUNFORD IS A DOCUMENTED CLI ALUMNA. She is named on the Jackson Hole Conservation Alliance’s own Conservation Leadership Institute page, alongside Abbie Bilotta, Trevor Bloom, Aaron Hamby, Suzanne Knighton, Tanya Anderson, Peggie dePasquale, Noelle Guernsey and Christy Lewis. Her alumna status had previously been unverified. It is now documented.

Also established: CLI ran thirteen rounds over a decade with nearly 200 graduates and is currently paused; it is overseen by JHCA Policy Director Rebecca Singer; and it relaunched in partnership with Voices Jackson Hole, Camina Conmigo and the Snake River Fund.