Shelter JH — the local hinge

Every flow and relationship

Why this one organization 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 where a national funding structure becomes a local endorsement, and where the disclosure regime stops.

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 organization that gave Way Back PAC $1,200,000 this cycle, 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 organization that endorsed them, the donor network whose director chaired that organization, 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 organization. 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 — but one paid its future chair

The Storer Foundation gives Shelter JH 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 advocacy funding comes from Sheridan and from Houston. The valley’s third foundation is different: the Community Foundation of Jackson Hole shows $25,014 in 2023 “for Shelter JH toward Old Bill’s approved activities” and $68,659 in 2024 for “ShelterJH — education, empowerment program,” both paid to Jackson Hole United, a 501(c)(3) fiscal sponsor. A c4 cannot take charitable money directly; a charity can take it for the c4’s charitable program and answer for it. That is lawful and ordinary. It is also the article’s mechanism in miniature, and it appears on the foundation’s return, not on Shelter JH’s.

One line on the Storer Foundation’s FY2022 return belongs here anyway. Among its five highest-paid contractors that year: “Nicole Kaufman, Victor, ID — programmatic consultant — $67,087.” That year Nikki Kaufman was vice chair of Shelter JH; she chaired it in 2024. Money to a person is not money to an organization, paying a consultant is ordinary, and the foundation disclosed it because the law requires it. The return does not say what the work was. It is noted here because this map exists to show where the two channels touch, and this is the one place a Storer dollar lands on a person running a Western Futures grantee.

4. What its own return shows, and what it does not

Shelter JH is a dues-paying membership organization of more than 600 people. On its 2023 return it reported $24,408 in member dues and $135,000 with no detail behind it. It is a 501(c)(4), not a PAC: it files a Form 990, must disclose its grants out, its officers and its revenue totals, and need not name a single donor. Since Rev. Proc. 2018-38 most non-charity exempt organizations do not report donor names to the IRS at all.

5. The endorsement

A Shelter JH endorsement is one of the most valuable things a candidate can get in a Teton County election, which makes the 2026 slate worth a second look. It endorsed Karyn Chin and Ali Dunford and recommended Luther Propst — the organization’s own two-tier distinction. All three won. Way Back PAC — funded by the same Sheridan c4 — 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, promoted the same three.

6. The housing record behind it

On 19 May 2025 Propst cast the sole vote against the master site plan for 1,437 units of housing at 70% deed-restricted — the largest workforce housing project in county history. Mark Newcomb and Wes Gardner, the two commissioners the slate unseated, voted yes on that plan, and on the developer’s ground lease and the $10 million the county put into the separate Virginian project. So an affordable-housing organization placed its lone no-voter in a lower tier than the two candidates it endorsed — and the reservation it published concerned the Virginian, not that vote.

The record is not a clean line. In July 2026 the commission voted 3–2 to end the Pennrose agreement at the Virginian, and Newcomb, Gardner and Propst were the three. Gardner’s stated reason was affordability; Newcomb’s ran the other way. Shelter JH faulted both from the pro-housing side. What Shelter JH has not published is the criteria or the scoring behind any of its selections, and it is not required to.

7. The chair, the letter and the question

Shelter JH’s endorsement letter of 9 October 2024 was signed during Nikki Kaufman’s chairship. It endorsed Arne Jorgensen and Natalia Macker — both named on her own published list of campaign-consulting clients. The letter’s standard, on page one: “We did not consider political party affiliation, personal connections, or personal support for any candidate.” No published record shows whether the board chair took part in the endorsement votes on candidates listed as her clients.

What the record does not yet show

1. What was “State Bill Organizer”? JHCA gave Clare Stumpf that title in 2019. Organizing 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 is documented on that page.

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.