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:

• Salzburg Global Seminar (SGS) is an educational group that organizes events in Washington D.C. and elsewhere to discuss public policy topics such as health, finance, and governance. SGS has received funding from nonprofits and foundations that include the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Open Society Institute. Listed corporate sponsors of SGS include Google, Amazon, the Coca-Cola Company, and the Walt Disney Company.
• Democracy Matters is a left-of-center political advocacy group that was created from American Bridge 21st Century, a super PAC founded by activist David Brock. In 2024, Democracy Matters received funding from organizations that included its sister 501(c)(3) nonprofit the Democracy Matters Foundation and the American Independent Foundation. In 2025, it made grants to several left-of-center groups including Evidence for Impact and Project 218 PAC.
• Interfaith Power and Light is a national network of state-based faith groups that organize church and other faith communities to promote left-of-center environmentalist policies. Affiliated state chapters include Georgia Interfaith Power and Light, Michigan Interfaith Power and Light, Minnesota Interfaith Power and Light, and Washington Interfaith Power & Light. The network originated from the left-of-center Regeneration Project. Multiple state chapters are members of the U.S. Climate Action Network (US-CAN).
• The Working World is a left-of-center lending group that claims to follow a “non-extractive” financing model where it limits returns on its investments to less than “the wealth generated for the borrower and their community.” It has received financial support from the Libra Foundation, a grantmaking organization founded by Hyatt hotels chain heir Nicholas Pritzker and his wife Susan Pritzker. Other donors have included the North Star Fund, the Proteus Fund, Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, the Tides Center, and the Tides Foundation.

• The Counter, also known as “The New Food Economy” on its tax filings, was a nonprofit media group that covered the food industry from a left-of-center perspective. Its funders included the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, the Chicago Community Trust, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the Windward Fund. The Counter shut down in 2022, but in 2024 its brand and archives were acquired by left-of-center environmentalist media group Grist.