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:

• Solidarity Pledge is a coalition of activist and grassroots organizations that promote left-of-center immigration policies in opposition to those of the Second Trump Administration. The primary organizations that formed the coalition in January 2025 included United We Dream, Make the Road States, the Action Lab, and CASA. Other organizations that have signed similar pledges include Popular Democracy, Community Change Action, National Immigration Law Center (NILC), United Teachers Los Angeles (UTLA), Transgender Law Center, and Women’s March.
• Civic Consulting Alliance (CCA) is a Chicago-based advocacy group that promotes city-wide left-of-center policies towards economic and criminal justice reform. As of 2025, the CCA was listed as a partner organization of the Steans Family Foundation’s “Policy & Ecosystem” program. Steans Family Foundation trustee Jennifer Steans was previously listed as a director for philanthropic consulting firm Arabella Advisors. As of 2025, CCA’s partners included Bain & Company, McKinsey and Company, Deloitte, Crowe, Kearney, and Zeno Group.
• Appalachian Community Capital (ACC) is a community development financial institution (CDFI) that provides financing for small businesses and weather-dependent energy projects within the Appalachian region. The ACC was created with $15.5 million in seed capital, which included $12 million from Bank of America, the Calvert Foundation, Deutsche Bank, and the Ford Foundation. In 2024, ACC was selected to receive a $500,000,000 grant from the Clean Communities Investment Accelerator, a program of the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund (GGRF) authorized through the Biden Administration‘s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).
• Wend Collective is a defunct “experimental” philanthropic vehicle that focused on “social change” in pursuit of goals such as “economic justice,” “renewable farming,” and combatting “structural racial inequality,” through what Inside Philanthropy called “targeted impact investing.” The Wend Collective was initially founded in 2016 and co-led by James C. Walton, the youngest son of Walmart founder Sam Walton. It shut down operations in 2024, and as of 2025 has been superseded by Wend II Inc., which is led by James M. Walton, James C. Walton’s son.
• Trans Women of Color Solidarity Network is an advocacy group based in Seattle, Washington that calls for “collective community care” for people identifying as “Two-Spirit,” transgender, and/or “femmes of color.” The organization advocates for these communities to receive “unrestricted financial resources” due to “systemic economic disempowerment and violence.” As of 2023, it was listed as a fiscally-sponsored project of the left-wing nonprofit Alliance for Global Justice.