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:

• 60 Plus Association is a right-of-center senior rights advocacy group that claims to be an alternative to the AARP. The group has advocated in favor of passing the Standardizing Permitting and Expediting Economic Development (SPEED) Act, increasing U.S.-based extraction of minerals and energy, and withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization (WHO). A 2018 report by Issue One claimed that 60 Plus was one of 15 “dark money” groups that made up more than 75 percent of the political “dark money” spent between January 2010 and December 2016, totaling more than $600 million.
• Resolve Philadelphia is a left-of-center nonprofit media outlet that focuses on stories from Philadelphia neighborhoods, especially Germantown and Overbrook. The group claims to focus on advancing “journalism rooted in equity, collaboration, and the elevation of community voices.” According to tax filings, the group has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Democracy Fund, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the John S. And James L, Knight Foundation.
• White Rose Resistance (WRR), registered with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as Vindex Media, is a pro-life activist group that advocates against abortion. WRR was founded in 2022 following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade, and was named after a German student-led Christian group that resisted the Nazi regime during World War II. Tax filings show that WRR has received funding from DonorsTrust, the Greater Houston Community Foundation, the National Philanthropic Trust, and the Raymond James Charitable Endowment Fund.
• Sierra Club Delta Chapter is the Louisiana-state chapter of the Sierra Club. It has worked with other environmentalist groups, including the Gulf Restoration Network, the Waterkeeper Alliance, and Earthjustice. The Delta Chapter is also a member of Louisiana Against False Solutions (LAFS), a left-of-center coalition opposing the development of traditional energy projects in the state. LAFS is a fiscally sponsored project of the Foundation for Louisiana. Members of the LAFS coalition have received funding from the Waverly Street Foundation, the David and Lucille Packard Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and the Bezos Earth Fund.

• The Swift Foundation is a private grantmaking organization founded in 1999 by John Swift, after he sold his family’s shares in UPS. In 2022, the foundation announced that it would be sunsetting, and that it would spend its endowment down by 2028 to ensure “a transference of family wealth to Indigenous wisdom keepers and cultural bearers living in Indigenous homelands and communities.” Its grantees have included the Global Greengrants Fund, Thousand Currents, the Climate Justice Alliance, and Grassroots International.