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:

• Futures Without Violence is an advocacy and training group based in San Francisco that works to reduce gender-based and domestic violence. In 2020, the group was identified as one of 116 organizations that received a portion of a $1.7 billion round of donations from MacKenzie Scott, the ex-wife of Amazon founder and former CEO Jeff Bezos. Futures Without Violence has also received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and federal grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS).
• Gender Action is a left-of-center advocacy group that pressures international organizations such as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to adopt Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-type criteria in their operations. According to its website, Gender Action has received funding from several groups including the Libra Foundation, the Tides Foundation, and the United Nations Development Programme. It has also co-produced reports with the Heinrich Böll Foundation, an organization associated with the German Green Party.
• Ann and Gordon Getty Foundation is a private foundation that provides funding for educational, environmental, and other causes in the San Francisco area and across the United States. It has supported left-of-center environmentalist groups such as the World Wildlife Fund, the Environmental Defense Fund, the Greenpeace Fund, and the Ocean Conservancy. Other policy-based groups that have received funding include the Tides Foundation, the Center for American Progress, the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, and Planned Parenthood.
• Arab Gulf States Institute is a Washington D.C.-based think tank that produces research based on developing political and economic ties between the United States and the Gulf region in the Middle East. The group has previously received funding from the Smith Richardson Foundation, Donor Advised Charitable Giving, the American Online Giving Foundation, and the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund. Listed corporate partners from 2022 included Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, Aramco, and General Electric.
• National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was a labor union founded in 1962 by labor activists Cesar Chavez, Dolores Huerta, and Gilbert Padilla to organize farm workers in California. In 1966, it merged with the AFL-CIO-funded Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee to form the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee, which would become the United Farm Workers of America labor union in 1972. In 2026, the late Cesar Chavez was accused of sexual assault and misconduct against multiple women and underage girls, including during his time leading the NFWA. Huerta was among his alleged victims.