InfluenceWatch Friday

InfluenceWatch, a project of Capital Research Center, is a comprehensive and ever-evolving compilation of our research into the numerous advocacy groups, foundations, and donors working to influence the public policy process. The website offers transparency into these influencers’ funding, motives, and connections while providing insight often neglected by other watchdog groups.

The information compiled in InfluenceWatch gives news outlets and other interested parties research to use in reporting on significant topics that are often overlooked by the American public.

CRC is pleased to present some of the most significant additions to InfluenceWatch in the past week:

• Aspen Journalism is a left-of-center nonprofit news outlet that provides coverage of public policy topics, including environmentalism, energy, and immigration, for the greater Aspen, CO region. It is a member of several news-based organizations including the Colorado Press Association, the Institute for Nonprofit News, and the News Revenue Hub. Aspen Journalism has received funding from organizations that include the Brett Family Foundation, the Catena Foundation, the Newsmatch – Fund for Nonprofit News at the Miami Foundation, the Rose Community Foundation (Colorado Media Project), and the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Foundation.
• Fair Share America is a coalition of left-of-center organizations and activist groups that advocates for increasing federal and state taxes. The coalition grew out of meetings convened by the Rockefeller Foundation and has received support from the National Education Association (NEA), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Americans for Tax Fairness, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities (CBPP), and the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy (ITEP). Other coalition members include the Center for Popular Democracy, United for Democracy, and many others.
• Social Finance is a Boston-based nonprofit that provides philanthropic services. In 2024, the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health (ARPA-H), a component of the National Institutes of Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, hired Social Finance to provide consulting services for its “HEalth care Rewards to achieve improved OutcomES” (HEROES) Program, which aims to “expand and improve preventive care, [and] reduce health care costs…” Social Finance has receive funding from organizations including Google, Walmart, the Truist Foundation, Arnold Ventures, the Omidyar Network, the MacArthur Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Gates Foundation.
• Open Democracy PAC was a left-of-center political action committee (PAC) formed in 2021 to support the campaigns of state-level Democratic candidates. It was listed as defunct as of March 2025. Open Democracy PAC has received contributions from several left-of-center groups and political organizations including the Sixteen Thirty Fund (which contributed over $4.3 million in the 2022 election cycle and another $550,000 in the 2024 election cycle), the Green Advocacy Project, and the Global Impact Social Welfare Fund. Open Democracy PAC contributed to the campaigns of state Democratic candidates including Nevada Secretary of State Cisco Aguilar(D), California state Sen. Monique Limon (D-Santa Barbara), Wisconsin State Assemblyman Ryan Spaude (D-Aushwabenon), Pennsylvania state Rep. Joanna McClinton (D-Philadelphia), and Michigan state Sen. Winnie Brinks (D-Grand Rapids).
• Solid Ground Washington is a left-of-center advocacy group that oversees programs and other initiatives to address poverty. It advocates in favor of “race and social justice efforts”, as well as undoing “racism and other oppressions that are root causes of poverty.” The group has received funding from several organizations including the Wyncote Foundation, the Gates Foundation, and the Rockefeller Foundation.