Apax Partners and NGP VAN

Footnotes in comments.

The Same Machine, Different Nameplates

No, the claim is not that Apax Partners secretly owns every clipboard carried by a Democratic canvasser. That's nonsense.

The argument is simpler: they are nodes of a political supply chain — data, local organizing, campaign software, and large-scale investment capital — and each have a dark financial underbelly.

Catalist is the data brain

It maintains a national voter database covering more than 263 million voting-age people and openly describes itself as the “data utility” of the progressive community. Its business is not merely keeping names and addresses tidy. It models voters, helps clients choose whom to persuade, identifies whom to mobilize, and connects that intelligence to outside organizing platforms. In other words, Catalist helps decide where political resources should go before the first door is knocked. (#1)

New Georgia Project supplied the field operation; Ufot supplied the human bridge

While Ufot led New Georgia Project and its affiliated action fund, Catalist unanimously elected her to its Board of Managers for an initial four-year term. Catalist praised her “data-informed approach” and said her experience would help it serve the progressive community.

Catalist still lists Ufot on its board, although New Georgia Project itself closed in October 2025. So this was not vague ideological sympathy between strangers: a leader of one of Georgia’s most consequential voter-mobilization operations was placed inside Catalist’s governance structure. (#2) (#3)

New Georgia Project was formally described as nonpartisan, but its work was widely credited with helping produce Democratic gains in Georgia.

Its affiliated action fund operated in the expressly political lane, and the two organizations later agreed to a record $300,000 Georgia campaign-finance settlement involving undisclosed 2018 election activity. Apparently, the line between “civic participation” and “electing preferred candidates” becomes surprisingly philosophical when several million dollars cross it. (#3) (#4)

NGP VAN is the software muscle

Despite the shared initials, NGP VAN is not New Georgia Project; the progressive political industry simply has a limited appetite for distinctive branding. Catalist says its data and technical infrastructure flow through major field platforms and displays NGP VAN as one of them. NGP VAN, meanwhile, advertises itself without coyness as technology “powering the Democratic and progressive movement.”

Its products turn voter data into lists, canvassing routes, calls, texts, fundraising, compliance, and measurable voter contact. Catalist helps identify the targets; NGP VAN helps execute the operation. (#5) (#6)

The human alignment is subtle (NOT)

NGP VAN’s general manager previously worked on Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign and served as a regional field director for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee. Catalist’s board likewise includes veterans of the Clinton-Gore White House, Democratic campaigns, and the DNC.

These are not politically neutral plumbers who accidentally installed their pipes beneath one party’s headquarters. (#2) (#6)

Apax Partners supplies the scale

In 2021, Apax funds acquired EveryAction, whose corporate family included NGP VAN, and combined it with other software businesses in a transaction valuing the new platform at roughly $2 billion. The resulting company became Bonterra; NGP VAN continued as its Democratic-progressive political brand. Apax still describes Bonterra as an Apax-backed company and says it assembled the platform to connect nonprofits, foundations, corporations, donors, and volunteers at enormous scale. (#7) (#8)

The honest conclusion could be: Catalist supplied Democratic-progressive data; Ufot connected Catalist’s board to New Georgia Project’s organizing world; NGP VAN converted that data into political action; and Apax capital expanded the corporate platform housing NGP VAN. When the data provider, political organizers, software vendor, executives, customers, and investors all benefit from the same side becoming more operationally powerful, alignment is not mysterious.

Footnotes in comments.