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:
- The Advancing Girls Fund is a grantmaking initiative that funds left-of-center activism by young women of color, including transgender girls. It is a project of the left-of-center pass-through funder Tides Foundation, but was initially created as a project of the NoVo Foundation’s Adolescent Girls Grantmaking Initiative. Shauné Zunzanyika, the managing director of the Fund, is also the Tides Foundation’s deputy director of philanthropy. Zunzanyika was previously the director of programs for the Women’s Funding Network(WFN).
- The Giving Pledge is a program through which signatories commit to contributing at least 50 percent of their wealth to charity during their lifetime or in their will. The Pledge was first started in 2010 by Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates, his then-wife Melinda French Gates, and billionaire investor Warren Buffett. Other signers of the Pledge have included Tesla CEO Elon Musk, philanthropist Mackenzie Scott, former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg, CNN founder Ted Turner, and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.
- The People’s March was a protest that took place in January 2025 in Washington D.C., two days before President Donald Trump’s second inauguration. It was organized by Women’s March, and promoted left-of-center policies on a variety of issues such as environmentalism, abortion, and gender transition. Listed sponsors for the event included the Reproductive Freedom for All Foundation, Popular Democracy in Action, the National Organization for Women, Ben and Jerry’s, the Sierra Club, and Planned Parenthood.
- DemocracyAID is an effort to recruit former employees of the U.S. Agency for International Development(USAID) following the Agency’s closure by the second Trump administration and partial absorption into the U.S. State Department. It has been reported to be hosting workshops for federal employees. DemocracyAID was co-founded by former USAID staffers Danielle Reiff and Rosarie “Ro” Tucci.
- Better Budget Alliance (BBA) is a left-of-center economic policy advocacy group based in Boston, MA that promotes “participatory budgeting” practices to redistribute “public money into Black and Brown neighborhoods.” Members of its steering committee include the Center for Economic Democracy, the Youth Justice and Power Union, and MassBudget. Other participants include Asian American Resource Workshop, UFCW Local 1445, the Chinese Progressive Association, MassVOTE, Mass Voter Table, and JP Progressives.
