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:

• The Massachusetts Immigrants and Refugees Advocacy (MIRA) Coalition is a network of over 140 member organizations that claims to be the largest association advocating for the “rights and integration of immigrants and refugees” in New England. The MIRA Coalition is a founding member of the National Partnership for New Americans, which is co-chaired by former MIRA Coalition executive director Eva A. Millona. The Coalition has received funding from grantmaking foundations including the Herman and Frieda L. Miller Foundation, the Barr Foundation, the Klarman Family Foundation, and the Boston Foundation.
• The Chase and Stephanie Coleman Foundation is a grantmaking organization that has provided funding for left-of-center groups including Planned Parenthood, the Abortion Care Network, GreenWave and Oceans 5. In 2023, the foundation gave $2 million to the National Philanthropic Trust, a donor-advised fund provider which had previously received a $100 million donation from Google co-founder Larry Page. Other groups that received grants from the foundation in 2023 include Blue Meridian Partners, the Center for Community Alternatives, the Robin Hood Foundation, and Doctors Without Borders.
• Faithful Democracy is a coalition of national and local religious organizations that advocate for left-of-center electoral and campaign finance policy reforms. The group’s steering committee consists of nine faith-based groups including the Franciscan Action Network, the Friends Committee of National Legislation, the National Council of Churches, and the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism. Groups which have been characterized as “good governance partners” working with Faithful Democracy include Public Citizen, Common Cause, People for the American Way, and Democracy 21.
• The Foreign Policy Association (FPA) is a think tank that advocates and promotes discussions on foreign policy issues. The FPA collaborated with the Ford Foundation in the 1990s to publish “South Africa UPDATE,” a series of publications detailing the end of apartheid in South Africa, and Ford was a major supporter of the group during the 1950s and 1960s. The FPA has more recently received grants from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the Starr Foundation.
• The Argument is a media outlet that supports “liberal democracy” and “liberalism.” The publication was founded in August 2025 by former Atlantic staff writer Jerusalem Demas, and features “high-profile contributors” including Vox co-founder Matt Ygelsias, former Biden Administration staffers Mike Konczal and Zach Liscow, and Center for Public Enterprise founder Paul Williams. The Argument was created with $4 million in funding from Arnold Ventures, Open Philanthropy, philanthropist Susan Mandel, , Pritzker Innovation Fund founder Rachel Pritzker, and Tyler Cowen’s Emergent Ventures.