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:

• Go Austin Vamos Austin (GAVA) is a community advocacy group that promotes left-of-center policies on issues such as health care, housing, immigration, and “equitable” infrastructure planning. In 2023, the group was recognized by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as a Culture of Health Prize winner for “building health and wellbeing with and for community residents who have been displaced by gentrification or other structural barriers.” GAVA executive director Carmen Llanes Pulido ran for Mayor of Austin against incumbent Kirk Watson (D) in 2024, but lost after only receiving 20% of the vote.
• National Bankers Association (NBA) is a professional association that advocates on behalf of “minority depository institutions” (MDI), where 51 percent or more of the voting stock is owned by one or more “socially and economically disadvantaged individuals.” According to its 2025 policy priorities, the NBA advocates for expanding the U.S. Department of the Treasury’s 2020 Emergency Capital Investment Program (ECIP) to provide capital to financial institutions in underserved communities. In 2023, the NBA received funding from the Hive Fund for Climate and Gender Justice, the JP Morgan Chase Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation.
• Encompass was a nonprofit organization founded in 2017 to promote “racial diversity, equity, and inclusion” in the animal advocacy movement. The group previously received funding from Open Philanthropy, the Good Ventures Foundation, the Seattle Foundation, the Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and the Chicago Community Trust. The group dissolved in July 2022, while distributing its remaining funds to 14 organizations it says were led by “Black, Indigenous, and People of the Global Majority” activists.
• Central Florida Jobs with Justice (CFJWJ) is an advocacy group, affiliated with the national Jobs with Justice network, that promotes left-of-center policies in the Central Florida region. Its member groups include local chapters of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), the Communications Workers of America (CWA), the International Union of Painters and Allied Trades (IUPAT), the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), Unite Here, and the National Education Association (NEA). CFJWJ has received funding from the Ford Foundation, the Solutions Project, and the Schott Foundation for Public Education.
• Bluesky is a social media platform created in 2019 by then-Twitter (later changed to X) CEO Jack Dorsey as a project to “decentralize” the main platform before it became its own separate company in 2021. Dorsey resigned as Twitter’s CEO in November 2021 and joined Bluesky’s board in February 2022. Bluesky officially launched in February 2024, though Dorsey would resign in May of that year, claiming the site was “literally repeating all the mistakes [Twitter] made.” Bluesky has been accused of catering to left-of-center former Twitter users, specifically in reaction to Tesla CEO Elon Musk buying Twitter (later X) in 2022 and President Donald Trump’s reelection in November 2024.