Erstwhile Venezuelan dictator-president Nicolas Maduro is in federal custody after having been captured in a cross-border raid by U.S. forces. This has predictably touched off a firestorm among his most ardent nonprofit supporters in America, and few groups have been more vocal or consistent in their admiration for Maduro’s repressive and boundlessly corrupt regime than the Alliance for Global Justice.
Background
A mainstay of the internationally oriented far-left in the United States, the Alliance for Global Justice is a 501(c)(3) public charity that principally serves as a fiscal sponsor for ideologically-aligned activist groups that do not have their own tax-exempt status from the IRS. The Alliance has described itself as “the accounting department for the movement for social change,” and takes pride in “continuing to sponsor the groups that no other fiscal sponsor will take on.” In its fiscal year ending March 2024 it reported $6.7 million in total revenue against $8.8 million in expenses.
Despite its relatively modest size, the Alliance for Global Justice has occasionally made headlines for its fiscal sponsorship activities. During its 2020-2021 fiscal year, the Alliance brought in $56.4 million (an eightfold increase from the year before) largely due to its sponsorship of the Movement for Black Lives and a number of other Black Lives Matter-related groups. It was also revealed to have served as fiscal sponsor for Samidoun, a group which was sanctioned by the governments of the United States and Canada as “a sham charity that serves as an international fundraiser for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) terrorist organization.” Today, the “donate” page on the Alliance’s website blames what the group calls its “right-wing Zionist adversaries” for its resulting inability to accept credit card payments.
Support for Venezuela
Since the Cuban Revolution in 1959, the activists occupying America’s leftmost fringes have regularly turned toward Latin America in search of a geopolitical lodestar. The Alliance for Global Justice is no exception. Its origins can be traced back to 1979 and a pro-Sandinista group called the Nicaragua Network. Until 2024, the Alliance served as fiscal sponsor for the Venceremos Brigade, which has dispatched thousands of sympathetic American radicals to Cuba to labor in solidarity with its communist government since 1969.
It is no different with Venezuela, which alongside Nicaragua tends to account for an outsized portion of the Alliance for Global Justice’s public commentary. The group has been a staunch supporter of Venezuela’s socialist “Bolivarian Revolution” since Hugo Chavez became president in 1999. It attributes the country’s myriad socioeconomic problems not to profound domestic corruption and mismanagement, but to sanctions and other foreign interference from the United States.
It can be difficult to distinguish material published on the Alliance’s website from Venezuelan government propaganda. In 2024, after Maduro claimed to have secured another six-year term as president in an election widely considered to have been outright stolen, the Alliance dutifully promoted the regime’s official results. In a statement, it declared:
Alliance for Global Justice congratulates Venezuela for a clear, transparent, consistent and peaceful electoral process implemented on July 28. We also congratulate President Nicolás Maduro on his re-election and the Venezuelan National Electoral Council (CNE) for administering a free and fair election.
The Alliance has also been aggressively critical of the decision to award the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to Venezuelan pro-democracy opposition figure Maria Corina Machado, publishing a doctored photograph of her with the flags of the United States and Israel superimposed across her face and clothing. Earlier in 2025, the Alliance’s weekly newsletter spotlighted Iran’s violent theocratic autocracy for standing with Venezuela “against US aggressions,” alongside a quote from Maduro declaring that “the State of Israel was created to colonize the Middle East and Central Asia, to plunder the wealth of those regions and subjugate their peoples.”
The Alliance’s affinity for Maduro’s dictatorship evidently extends to a willingness to encourage domestic lawbreaking. In conjunction with several other activist groups (including Code Pink), it had previously asked supporters to pledge to rapidly “perform direct action and risk arrest if the US invades or otherwise overthrows the democratically elected government of Venezuela.”
It made good on this pledge after Maduro was captured in January 2026, joining with dozens of other activist groups in calling for “coordinated and organized resistance” across the United States in order to “defend Venezuela’s sovereignty and right to resist” and to “shut down the supply chains of imperialism.” To the Alliance for Global Justice, Maduro’s capture was part of an effort “to thwart the autonomy and success of the Venezuelan people” and “an attack on socialism, in all its forms, in order to advance a new fascism across the Americas.”
Major Funders
All of this makes the question of who currently funds the Alliance for Global Justice an interesting one. At least thirty-one nonprofit grantmakers reported giving at least $20,000 to the Alliance in their respective fiscal years ending in 2024, which is the most recent available. These are listed below in descending order, along with links to their corresponding profiles on InfluenceWatch:
- Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program: $392,100
- Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund: $303,908
- Colorado Health Foundation: $300,150
- William Penn Foundation: $250,000
- Groundswell Fund: $220,170
- Morgan Stanley Global Impact Funding Trust: $180,000
- Common Counsel Foundation: $130,000
- Marin Community Foundation: $125,000
- New York Foundation: $102,500
- Michael Reese Health Trust: $100,000
- Park Foundation: $90,000
- Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation: $89,000
- Borealis Philanthropy: $80,000
- Race Forward: $80,000
- 128 Collective Foundation: $75,000
- North Star Fund: $60,000
- Solutions Project: $60,000
- Claneil Foundation: $55,000
- SisterSong: $50,200
- Krupp Family Foundation: $43,478
- Amalgamated Charitable Foundation: $38,250
- Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona: $37,090
- Destination Tomorrow: $30,000
- Field Foundation of Illinois: $30,000
- Key Lime Foundation: $30,000
- Manzanita Foundation: $30,000
- San Diego Foundation: $25,000
- Tides Center: $25,000
- Institute for Local Self-Reliance: $23,000
- Brown University: $22,200
- American Online Giving Foundation: $20,382
Combined, these thirty-one funders gave $3,097,428 to the Alliance for Global Justice in 2024, which would represent somewhat less than half of the group’s total revenue that year. Of course, such a calculation cannot precisely be made, because many of these grantmakers operate on different fiscal years than the Alliance (and from one another).
Thoughts and questions
A few additional comments may be worth noting.
First, functionally-anonymous grants from donor-advised fund providers such as Vanguard, Fidelity, and Morgan Stanley account for a significant portion of the Alliance for Global Justice’s revenue. This is consistent with modern philanthropic giving trends, but also may reflect the particularly controversial nature of the Alliance’s advocacy and a desire among donors to conceal their support for the group. That, of course, is speculation.
Second, while some grants were made simply to support the Alliance’s general operations, many others were earmarked for specific fiscally sponsored projects. The Common Counsel Foundation noted that its funding was designated for the Reale Justice Network and Assata’s Daughters (named in honor of the recently-deceased fugitive murderer Assata Shakur), while Borealis Philanthropy’s grant was for the purpose of supporting Black Trans Media.
Finally, it would be interesting to hear what these grantmakers think of the Alliance’s strident pro-Maduro advocacy—to say nothing of its other noxious activism. Do they agree with it? If not, why do they continue their financial support? This is especially true for those funders that made general support grants—such as the Park Foundation—since they cannot claim that they merely intended to support one of the Alliance’s sponsored projects. Such an argument would nevertheless be specious, however, as the Alliance’s board only accepts projects for sponsorship if they align with its own mission and vision. The bottom line is that these funders are willingly underwriting a group that openly favors a rotten authoritarian kleptocracy over the United States of America.
