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:

• Pivotal Philanthropies Momentum Foundation (also known as the Rosefinch Foundation) is one of several large private foundations that exist under the Pivotal philanthropic and advocacy umbrella controlled by Melinda French Gates. In 2024, the foundation received $982,228,982 from Bill Gates as part of a $12.5 billion philanthropic separation agreement between the two, who were divorced in 2021.
• Brian Acton is an entrepreneur and philanthropist who co-founded the mobile messaging app WhatsApp, which was sold to Facebook in 2014. Along with his wife Tegan, he subsequently established a philanthropic network called Wildcard Giving, which consists of Sunlight Giving, Acton Family Giving, and Solidarity Giving. Sunlight Giving is a private foundation that supports Silicon Valley children and families who live in poverty. Acton Family Giving is a donor-advised fund housed at the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund that supports initiatives personally connected to the Actons. Solidarity Giving is a donor-advised fund also housed at Fidelity that supports left-leaning sociopolitical initiatives.
• Biomimicry Institute is a Montana-based environmental group dedicated to biomimicry—the practice of copying nature’s designs—with a particular focus on climate change and biodiversity loss. In 2024, it reported total revenues of over $3.9 million. Its funders have included the Laudes Foundation and the VF Foundation.
• Save Bristol Bay is an environmental group that opposes the proposed Pebble Mine project in southwestern Alaska, arguing that it would endanger the salmon fishery in nearby Bristol Bay. It is a project of Trout Unlimited, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that reported over $83.4 million in total 2024 revenues.
• BreakThrough News (BTN) is a far-left nonprofit media outlet located in New York City. It produces content that is broadly critical of the United States and supportive of left-wing authoritarian regimes, such as those governing China, Cuba, and Venezuela. Its editor-in-chief Ben Becker and host/producer Eugene Puryear are both founding members of the communist Party for Socialism and Liberation. BreakThrough News operates out of the same building as the People’s Forum, a far-left activist group that has reportedly received funding from pro-China donor Neville Roy Singham.