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 Resource Center is a LGBT health services group that provides HIV care resources, and which also operates a community center and senior housing development in Dallas, Texas. In 2023, it was one of numerous organizations that signed on to a joint statement criticizing Target for removing LGBT and Pride merchandise from its stores, following backlash. The Resource Center has received funding from the Eugene McDermott Foundation, the Communities Foundation of Texas, the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, and the Moody Foundation.
• Black Jewish Justice Alliance (BJJA) is a faith-based activist coalition based in Los Angeles, California that advocates for left-of-center criminal justice policies. The coalition was initially created in 2012 as a joint project between Clergy and Laity United for Economic Justice (CLUE) and the Los Angeles branch of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Organizations the coalition has worked with include Dignity and Power Now, Bend the Arc: A Jewish Partnership for Justice, and the Youth Justice Coalition. In October 2020, BJJA hosted its second annual Heschel/King Forum to discuss “white supremacy,” and other topics. Other sponsors of the forum included the ACLU of Southern California and IKAR.
• Our Family Coalition is a San Francisco-based nonprofit that provides support and educational services for LGBT families in California and engages in related policy advocacy. In June 2020, it was one of roughly four hundred groups that signed an open letter calling for reduced law enforcement funding and an end to qualified immunity for police officers. Our Family Coalition has previously received funding from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Jonathan Logan Family Foundation, the American Online Giving Foundation, and the Horizons Foundation.
• Puffin Foundation is a New Jersey-based private foundation that makes grants to left-of-center and arts-focused nonprofits. It previously had a sister organization called Puffin Foundation West, which was based in North Carolina and dissolved in 2024. The Puffin Foundation has made grants to the Type Media Center, the Institute for Public Affairs, the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives, and the American Civil Liberties Union Foundation.
• Leadership Now PAC is a hybrid political action committee (PAC) initially founded in 2022 under the name “Project Democracy,” before its name was changed in 2025. The PAC is affiliated with the 501(c)(4) advocacy group Leadership Now Project, whose founder and CEO is Daniella Ballou-Aares. Leadership Now PAC has received funding from the Sixteen Thirty Fund, State Victory Action, A Better Wisconsin Together, and Pivotal Ventures.