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:

• AfterImage Public Media is a nonprofit that produces and releases films and documentaries it claims are “designed to raise awareness about matters in the public interest.” Several productions have featured left-of-center perspectives on policy issues including the economy, homelessness, illegal immigrants, and climate change. AfterImage Public Media has received funding from several left-of-center groups including Atlantic Philanthropies, The Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Zellerbach Family Foundation.
• Future Earth International (FEI) is an environmentalist group created to promote and help countries achieve the United Nations’ (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG policy proposals include reducing wealth inequality, promoting energy technologies to reduce climate change, achieving gender equality, and ending global poverty. FEI has received funding from organizations including the Open Society Foundations (OSF), Microsoft, the Oak Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
• The Bureau of Investigative Journalism (TBIJ) is a London-based investigative media outlet founded by technology entrepreneur and U.K. Labour Party member David Potter and his wife, journalist Elaine Potter. TBJI has released stories with a left-of-center perspective on current events. It has partnered with Climate Whistleblowers, an NGO that supports whistleblowers who release environmentalist and climate change-related data. TBJI has received funding from several left-of-center groups including the Gates Foundation, the Open Society Foundations (OSF), the Oak Foundation USA, and the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting.
• Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility is a research institute and a subsidiary organization of The New School, a private college based in New York City. The institute provides funding for research into topics on migration such as “climate-induced migration,” and has published reports containing policy recommendations for the Biden Administration. The director of the institute, Alexander Aleinikoff, previously served as the United Nations (UN) Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees and was co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for former President Barack Obama’s 2008 transition team.
• Campus Progress was an education activist group, defunct as of 2024, that promoted left-of-center education policies within the United States. It was a project of Washington D.C.-based think tank Center for American Progress (CAP), and previously collaborated with other left-of-center groups including Student PIRGs, RePower, The Nation magazine, and USAction Education Fund. Campus Progress hosted an annual “National Student Conference” discussing left-of-center policy topics, which had featured guest speakers such as former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama.