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:

• Eat Learn Play Foundation is a charity that provides nutritional, health, and literacy support for children in the Oakland Unified School District. It was founded in 2018 by Golden State Warriors basketball player Stephen Curry and his wife, Ayesha Curry. It has received funding from the Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, the East Bay Community Foundation, and the National Philanthropic Trust. Supporting and community partners listed on its website include the Trust for Public Land, the TomKat Foundation, Oakland REACH, the Hellman Foundation, and the Kenneth Rainin Foundation.
• Hold the Line PAC is a political action committee (PAC) founded in 2024 to help “the next generation of Democratic leaders” and “defeat MAGA, anti-democracy Republicans at the ballot box.” The PAC was founded by Marcus Flowers, who ran in the 2022 midterm elections for the U.S. House of Representatives, losing to then-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA). Hold the Line PAC is a listed partner group of the anti-Second Trump administration protest movement No Kings. Other No Kings members include the 50501 Movement, Indivisible, Common Cause, Democracy Forward, the Human Rights Campaign, the Sierra Club, and Working Families Power.
• Advancing American Freedom Foundation (AAFF) is a right-of-center organization that works to educate “the American people about the ideas of free markets, limited government, traditional values, and strong American leadership in the world.” AAFF is the 501(c)(3) sister organization of Advancing American Freedom, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit founded by former Vice President Mike Pence that claims to support “the Conservative Movement by developing innovative policy solutions, strategies, coalitions, and messaging that builds upon those accomplishments, [and] expands freedom for all Americans.” The AAFF has received funding from DonorsTrust, the National Christian Charitable Foundation, the Searle Freedom Trust, the National Philanthropic Trust, and the John William Pope Foundation.
• Press Forward Minnesota is the state chapter of the national Press Forward network, and was created to invest $10 million dollars in local news and media organizations around the state. The initiative, housed within the Minnesota Council on Foundations, was founded in 2024 through funding from the McKnight Foundation, the Bush Foundation and the Glen Nelson Center at American Public Media Group. In early 2025, Press Forward Minnesota made $520,000 worth of inaugural grants to 13 Minnesota-based recipients.
• Hearthland Foundation is a private grantmaking organization founded by film director Steven Spielbergand his wife, actress Kate Capshaw. Spielberg and Capshaw also co-founded the Righteous Persons Foundation in 1995. The Hearthland Foundation has made grants to several left-of-center organizations including the Tides Center, the Hopewell Fund, the Windward Fund, the WorkMoney Foundation, the Equal Justice Initiative, and the March for Our Lives Foundation.