The group, backed by Alan Simpson and Erskine Bowles, is operating at a small loss. Anti-debt group finds itself in red

A year and a half after launching with much fanfare, a group affiliated with fiscal watchdogs Erskine Bowles and former Sen. Alan Simpson is nearly broke.

The Can Kicks Back — which targets millennials and was conceived as a partner and affiliate of the group Fix the Debt — is running low on cash, according to emails and documents reviewed by POLITICO.


The group left a history of documents, including financial statements and internal deliberations over policy decisions, online in a Google Group that was open to public view but was recently closed. Those documents provide a peek into the day-to-day planning and operation of a modern public affairs campaign, one that publicly presented itself as driven by grass-roots energy but largely relied on big donors and wealthy Wall Street types for funding.

Fix the Debt furnished nearly $200,000 in seed money to The Can Kicks Back in late 2012. The groups are part of a loose coalition of anti-debt organizations that sought to pressure House Republicans and President Barack Obama to come to a grand bargain on reducing the debt and dealing with long-term entitlements.

But with a grand bargain dead in the water, both groups have struggled of late. Fix the Debt is in the midst of an organizational transition, while The Can Kicks Back is facing questions about the group’s finances and future direction.

As of November, The Can Kicks Back was operating at a small loss. The group’s cash reserves were down to $70,000, with more than $75,000 in outstanding donor commitments, according to documents and emails. And the group’s co-founders and management team have expressed concern about its future.

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According to emails, the group has no actual debt but only enough cash to last through April.

“Without someone/something else covering staff costs and without fundraising miracles like Stan or near-Stan happening consistently, I don’t know how we both sustain [an] organization and do meaningful things,” Nick Troiano, co-founder and communications director of the group, wrote in a November email.

Troiano was referring to a large donation by hedge fund manager Stan Druckenmiller. According to emails, Druckenmiller provided the group with a $250,000 check in June 2013. That single check accounted for nearly 40 percent of the group’s fundraising haul last year.

Not that the group hasn’t tried. According to emails, it also took meetings or made fundraising asks of former oil and gas executive T. Boone Pickens, aerospace magnate Norman R. Augustine and First Pacific CEO Bob Rodriguez, among others, since 2012.

The group has also approached Fix the Debt for additional financial resources and brainstormed a list of donors to be set up with that included former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, Blackrock CEO Larry Fink, salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff, venture capitalist Reid Hoffman, eBay CEO John Donahoe and others.

The Can Kicks Back denied this week that its financial state is precarious. “The Can Kicks Back is proud to be a voice for our generation on issues related to long-term debt, decreased investment and reckless spending. We have no debt nor do we operate beyond our own financial means. A qualification from cherry-picked internal email months old is hardly representative of TCKB’s current financial situation,” Executive Director Ryan Schoenike said. “We are grateful for the support we have received and have revised our outreach, digital, and fundraising plans in order to continue our work of increasing millennial turnout in 2014 and beyond.”

The group is organized as both a 501(c)(3) and 501(c)(4) nonprofit — meaning that donations are anonymous. It voluntarily chooses to publish donor names, but not amounts.

“There are a number of points here that are factually inaccurate, and we won’t comment on unsubstantiated claims,” Schoenike said, although the group declined to specify which items the statement was referring to.

Schoenike and Troiano founded the group with Michael Eisenstadt, Jake Parent and Brandon Aitchison, and all five serve as the organization’s steering committee.

Though nominally independent, The Can Kicks Back has always had a tenuous relationship with its partner groups, Fix the Debt and another nonprofit called Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Both Fix the Debt and The Can Kicks Back have struggled with the perception that they are “astroturf” advocacy groups that are acting as mouthpieces of Wall Street and corporate interests.

In response to a 2012 Slate piece by reporter Dave Weigel linking The Can Kicks Back with the billionaire anti-debt activist Peter Peterson, Eisenstadt argued that the group should request a correction — saying that the perception that they are Peterson-funded was hurting their credibility, according to an email thread.

“Technically one can make an argument that we are …,” Parent wrote back in an email. “We receive most of our money from [Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget], which has received large amounts of funding from Peterson.” Slate never appended a correction to the piece.

Other tensions flared with Fix the Debt over that group’s lack of diversity.

In one email thread, The Can Kicks Back founders mock a photo of a Fix the Debt event featuring a “bunch of old white guys.” Troiano mocked Fix the Debt’s diversity efforts as “pathetic.” Asked for comment, a senior The Can Kicks Back official said: “We enjoyed working with Fix the Debt and appreciate their efforts toward a cause we share.”

But the group also worried about its own public perception and internal diversity issues.

“As everyone is aware, our team is all white and 75% male … made all the more glaringly obvious now by the photos on the about page,” Eisenstadt wrote in an email in September 2012. “I strongly suggest we develop a plan to address this in the next couple weeks before we get branded as something we are not.”

“Millennials are the most diverse generation in history and we should reflect that,” responded Schoenike, the executive director. “Great suggestion.”

In a statement, Fix the Debt praised the work that The Can Kicks Back has done on the issue of debt and deficit awareness among young people.

“They are a great group which has worked really hard to engage youth in fiscal issues through a number of incredibly creative efforts, and we supported them because we think engaging youth is so important and wanted to help them get started,” said Maya MacGuineas, president of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget — Fix the Debt’s parent organization.

And when identical op-eds were placed by partner organization Fix the Debt in three college newspapers across the country, The Can Kicks Back team expressed its dismay.

“I wrote the op-ed for Fix the Debt to use for our members who participated in their flyin,” a reference to a fly-in, or Washington advocacy day. “I assumed they wouldn’t be such idiots about placing the same one three times,” Troiano wrote in November.

Other members of The Can Kicks Back’s own steering committee said they were uncomfortable with Fix the Debt’s public image as a conservative or corporate-backed organization.

“Due to the fact we have become so ingrained as part of Fix the Debt, I’m going to have to ask that you remove me from the website and any promotional materials,” Parent wrote in February 2013. “Fix the Debt is increasingly seen (I think in a lot of ways justifiably) as a mouthpiece for corporate America, and particularly Wall Street. Without diversity of backing from other sectors, it’s becoming difficult for me to justify my role supporting such an effort. I’m not sure how this will affect my involvement with the group overall. I’m still considering it. But for now I’d prefer my role be removed from public view.”

Parent remains listed on the group’s website.

Amid the current cash crunch, The Can Kicks Back’s leadership is hunting around for additional resources. The organization has retained the fundraising firm Rock Creek Advisors. According to the agreement, Rock Creek Advisors will be paid a discount rate until at least $100,000 has been raised, according to emails and documents.

With the failure of Congress and Obama to come to an agreement on debts and deficits, the group is planning to turn its attention to the 2014 midterms, according to email conversations between its members. The group leaders came to a consensus in mid-January to “make fiscal issues a top voting issue of Millennials.”

According to a January email discussion, the group decided against direct spending in elections on behalf of candidates in favor of a targeted issue campaign to raise young voters’ awareness of debt and deficit issues.

“We would probably need to target districts here too,” Schoenike wrote. “Rather than focus on increasing turnout we focus on getting those who turn [out] to vote on our issue. Any increase in turnout would be a bonus. With Millennials now making up the largest voting [bloc] showing we would influence their voting habits could be huge.”