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:

• Lake County Community Foundation is a grantmaking organization that provides grants to groups advocating for left-of-center policies on issues such as immigration, education, and racial justice. It was founded in 2003 as a division of the Chicago Community Trust, until it became its own independent entity in 2022. In 2020, the group posted a “Commitment to Racial Justice” entry on its website advocating for greater “racial justice” as a means of “rectifying hundreds of years of slavery, segregation, culture and policy that has enabled systemic racism.”
• Israel Trauma Coalition (ITC) is a local crisis response organization that operates “resilience centers” within the State of Israel and provides emergency services for those impacted by conflict or other crises in the region. The group was founded in 2001 by the United Jewish Appeal-Federation of Jewish Philanthropies of New York (UJA-Federation of New York). It acts as an advisory body for the United Nations (UN) as of 2024. The ITC has operated resilience centers near the Gaza border following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terror attack, and within Ukraine following Russia’s invasion of the country in 2022. It also sent personnel to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania following the October 2018 Tree of Life Synagogue mass shooting.
• Queer Works is an advocacy group located in Palm Springs, California that claims to offer mental health services for “transgender and gender non-binary” individuals. In October 2024, the group’s founder and CEO, Jacob Rostovsky, was charged with 53 felony counts and accused of stealing over $940,000 in public funds from local communities, including Palm Springs and Riverside County, California. Much of this money was intended to go towards the group’s universal basic income pilot program, offering participants $800 in monthly stipends. Instead, it was allegedly used by Rostovsky for personal expenses such as “purchases at Disney, Burberry, and the Beverly Garland Hotel.”
• California TRANScends is a self-described “Black trans woman-led organization” that advocates for legislation providing “equal access to healthcare, education, employment, and legal protections” for the transgender community. The group is a fiscally sponsored project of left-of-center funding platform Possibility Labs. Possibility Labs has received funding from several left-of-center organizations including Urban Tilth, Asian Pacific Environmental Network (APEN), and the Ford Foundation.
• C3 Solutions (Conservative Coalition for Climate Solutions) is an environmentalist organization that advocates for right-of-center solutions to address climate change, energy policy, and economic development. Members of the group’s board of directors and advisory board include former Senator Rick Santorum(R-PA), Texas Energy Poverty Research Institute (TEPRI) founder Rebecca Klein, former George W. Bush administration advisor Michael Bruce, and American Enterprise Institute (AEI) board member Yuval Levin. The group has received funding from several grantmaking organizations between 2022 and 2024 including the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, the John William Pope Foundation, the National Philanthropic Trust, and Breakthrough Energy.