Alliance for Justice

Foundation Watch
The Private Investments of Private Foundations: Philanthropy’s “Dark Money”?
The IRS instructs private foundations to attach a detailed schedule of investments to their annual publicly available Form 990-PF. Some, however, do not include meaningful detail on how their vast…
by Robert Stilson on February 17, 2022

Foundation Watch
The Private Investments of Private Foundations: Incongruous Investments
Investment portfolios shouldn’t be battlefields for ideological conflict, but many foundations—and particularly the activist groups they fund—are increasingly choosing to make them so. This can result in a marked disconnect…
by Robert Stilson on February 17, 2022

Foundation Watch
The Private Investments of Private Foundations: Capitalism for Me, But Not for Thee
The specifics of a given foundation’s investments—indeed, whether those investments are properly disclosed and itemized at all—is rather less relevant when that foundation’s grantmaking evidences wholesale antagonism to market capitalism…
by Robert Stilson on February 17, 2022

Foundation Watch
The Private Investments of Private Foundations: Depoliticize Philanthropy
The point here is not that foundation investments should be politicized. They should not. Foundations should, however, abide by what appear to be unambiguous IRS transparency instructions and be prepared…
by Robert Stilson on February 17, 2022

Foundation Watch
The Left’s Mystery Billionaire: Committee Hearing Debacle
The Ford Foundation gives well over $100 million per year to programs that advance policy and political wins for the Left and Democratic politicians, yet Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI) recently…
by Ken Braun on November 2, 2021

Foundation Watch
The Left’s Mystery Billionaire: Senator Cancel Culture
The Ford Foundation is an accidental byproduct of bad tax policy and unforeseen consequences. Confiscatory estate tax rates during the first half of the 20th century left one of the…
by Ken Braun on November 2, 2021

Foundation Watch
The Left’s Mystery Billionaire: Hard Left Turns
Sen. Whitehouse’s assertion that the Ford Foundation “doesn’t seem to have much in the way of a political motive or purpose” is contradicted by tens of millions of dollars in…
by Ken Braun on November 2, 2021

Foundation Watch
The Left’s Mystery Billionaire: Dark Roads Through Arabella
At least 114 separate Ford Foundation grants, totaling almost $65 million, were given over the previous five years to the New Venture Fund. In Sen. Whitehouse’s classification system, each one…
by Ken Braun on November 2, 2021

Special Report
Leftist “Dark Money” Activists Target America’s Courts
Despite liberal claims about a “vast, right-wing conspiracy” to confirm constitutional originalists to federal courts—fueled by rivers of “dark money” from conservative donors—it’s the Left, not the Right that has…
by Hayden Ludwig on October 15, 2020

Foundation Watch
A Donor Can Stand Up
(PDF here) Conservatives may not approve of many of the causes that former billionaire Charles Feeney has given money to over the years, but they would agree that he…
by Neil Maghami on April 13, 2015