Imagine I start a cult and accumulate 20 members, then get millions in funding from a state benefactor who only requires that we advocate for them, then expand to a million members over the next decade, although sometime in the fifth year I was deposed and replaced by a successor hand-picked by the state benefactor.

There's definitely an extreme difference between what I've done here and what the state benefactor did, but the difference is that I was far less important than the benefactor. If anything, the state benefactor "set up" a political organization, and used my glorified yoga class as a "support."