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Open government advocacy group Sunlight Foundation cuts staff, suspends reporting tools

The Sunlight Foundation, a nonprofit and nonpartisan advocacy group that supports open government and tracks money in politics, announced Tuesday that it was cutting staff and suspending its data-driven projects and reporting tools.

The organization, which launched in 2006 with the express purpose of tracking money in politics, said that it would end its tool building and database maintenance, which are often used by reporters writing about campaign finance and politics. Michael Klein, the Sunlight Foundation’s board chairman, wrote in a post Tuesday explaining the decision to scale back dramatically.

“While we are enormously proud of what Sunlight has accomplished over the past decade, and has come to stand for, we are also aware of the changes time has wrought,” Klein wrote in the post. “We are aware that the robust maturation of technology over the past decade has — happily but substantially — reduced the urgency of Sunlight’s early role as a leading transparency innovator. In addition, the board had to recognize that Sunlight’s initiating objective— to build support for better legislation against and regulation of the power of money in politics— has been significantly limited by the US Supreme Court’s 5-4 Citizens United decision.”

It’s unclear the number of people who were laid off from Sunlight Foundation Tuesday, or who could be laid off in the future. The organization as of Tuesday morning employed around 25 people. Several staffers were informed today that their positions had been eliminated, but management is still in the process of informing others. At least one staff writer, Libby Watson, announced on Twitter that she had been laid off.

A spokesperson for Sunlight Foundation said that financial challenges played a role in the cuts and suspension of its tools. Sunlight Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, is funded through donations.

“It became increasingly harder to fund and maintain all of these different things,” the spokesperson said, referring to the various tools Sunlight Foundation has built over the years, tracking everything from deleted tweets of politicians to political fundraising.

Another factor was the organization’s inability to find a permanent executive director with a vision for the organization’s future, Klein wrote. Sunlight Foundation co-founder, Ellen Miller, stepped down from her role as executive director in 2014, and the organization struggled to retain upper management since then.

“The board has not found a candidate for executive director who persuaded us of both a compelling new strategic vision and of their capacity to lead Sunlight to its achievement,” Klein wrote. “Accordingly, we have determined to explore alliances with other organizations similarly motivated, perhaps merging with one of them, in an arrangement that advances and preserves Sunlight’s mission and identity with increased efficiency and effectiveness.”

The hope is that Sunlight Foundation’s work can live on and be built upon at likeminded organizations devoted to government transparency and campaign finance. Those possible partnerships – or a potential merger with another organization, which Klein said the organization was exploring — will play a role in the fate of the employees at the nonprofit. Those potential partnerships are expected to be announced in the coming weeks. For the time being, Sunlight Foundation hopes to continue scaled-back operations for as long as possible.