Elizabeth Koch, daughter of GOP mega-donor Charles Koch and reluctant nepo baby, received tens of millions from her family’s right-wing network last year and gave away less than $600,000, according to newly published tax filings.
Records obtained by the Center for Media and Democracy and shared with The Daily Beast show the Koch network started a tax-exempt organization called Unlikely Giving last year, then used it to donate $60 million—tax-free—to Elizabeth Koch’s nonprofit, Unlikely Collaborators.
Unlikely Collaborators made a splash with a New York Times profile earlier this year that, ironically, portrayed Koch as a self-aware activist attempting to escape the constraints of her family’s immense wealth. In one section, it quoted from a 2007 essay in which Koch, 47, described her young adulthood as full of “panic attacks and meltdowns and doctors and pharmaceuticals and terrifying my parents and staring down that dark well of nothing you do will ever be good enough you privileged waste of flesh.”
Unlikely Collaborators is Koch’s response to this experience: a mental health nonprofit dedicated to “help[ing] people untangle the stories holding them back through Experiences, Storytelling, Impact, and Investments,” according to its website. The organization’s main purpose is creating workshops, lectures and summits about something Koch calls “perception boxes,” or our warped perceptions of ourselves and the world around us.
An IRS 990 form from last year says the purpose of the Koch-aligned Unlikely Giving, a tax-exempt 501c(4), is to “support organizations that help people reach their full potential by understanding the nature of their perception box.” It lists only two donations for the 2022 tax year: $50 million to Unlikely Collaborators, Inc., and $10 million to the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation.
Unlikely Giving appears to be a repurposed from an earlier Koch-affiliated organization called Zero Zero One, which in previous years donated largely to a donor-advised fund called the National Philanthropic Trust. According to its 2019 tax-exempt application, Zero Zero One’s first action was to contribute to the Koch's Stand Together Trust, and it donated to both the Charles Koch Institute and Charles Koch Foundation that year.
The organization rebranded as Unlikely Giving last year, taking on a new name and a new cause but keeping the same president: Tobias Teal, the director of the Koch’s personal wealth management firm, 1888 Management LLC.
Teal said in an email to The Daily Beast that Unlikely Giving is “proud to provide financial support to Unlikely Collaborators, Inc. and the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation and the incredible work Elizabeth R. Koch is doing.”
A spokesperson for Unlikely Collaborators said in a statement that Elizabeth is “in the early stages of forming an ecosystem of organizations, including Unlikely Collaborators, Inc. and the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation, centered around self-investigation and self-understanding anchored in the thought provoking metaphor she created called Perception Box.” The spokesperson added that the organization does not engage in any political activities and that a list of nonprofits it supports is available on its website.
The organization also provided previously unpublished tax filings for the Unlikely Collaborators Foundation and Unlikely Collaborators, Inc. The foundation had only two donors in 2022: Unlikely Giving and Tiny Blue Dot, Inc., another of Elizabeth Koch's foundations, which donated $25 million. The donation from Unlikely Giving appears to have been the only source of revenue for Unlikely Collaborators, Inc. last year.
David Armiak, the research director for the Center for Media and Democracy, said it “raises eyebrows” that the Koch network donated money directly to the pet project of a family member, tax free.
"This is the second time in recent years that the Koch's maze of nonprofits has funneled tens of millions to advocacy groups run by Charles Koch's children that have extremely vague missions,” he told The Daily Beast. “It's even stranger that they repurposed and renamed a 2018 nonprofit to do it this time."
The Times profile of Elizabeth and Unlikely Collaborators presented a sympathetic view of the organization, which it described as wanting to “prompt a global movement of self-investigation.”. It offered faint praise from Dr. Lisa Feldman Barrett, a Northeastern University professor and paid adviser to the organization, who said: “As far as I can tell, Elizabeth is trying really hard to make sure everything she does is consistent with our best available guess of what’s going on scientifically.”
It also offered several cringe-inducing anecdotes, such as when Koch—demonstrating a technique from one of her workshops—asked the author who he was trying to please, and he replied: “Probably Daddy.” Koch told him she “[has] that issue too,” and had “done a lot of work on it.” When the author asked how much money she had inherited from “Daddy,” however, she laughed and declined to answer.
On its website, Unlikely Collaborators offers a vague description of “unlikely experiences” it curates to “help you face who you think you are,” though it provides no examples. Under “What We Do,” it touts donations to foundations such as the American Red Cross, where Koch reportedly led one of her workshops in 2021; the Holistic Life Foundation; PEN America; and the Yoga Alliance. It also cites early-stage investments in companies focused on “mental health and wellness, neurotechnology and psychedelic medicine.”
The tax filings, however, show Unlikely Collaborators gave out less than $600,000 in grants last year. The foundation gave $210,000 in grants to nonprofits supporting incarcerated individuals and $25,000 toward the production of documentaries about mindfulness. Unlikely Collaborators, Inc., gave $60,000 to the University of Miami and $333,333 to the “Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute,” a leadership training company on which Elizabeth Koch serves on the board.
Unlikely Collaborators' website makes no mention of any Koch family funding, though it features a prominent disclaimer at the bottom of its homepage: “We do not endorse or engage in ANY political, politically aligned, or policy-related activities,” it says.
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