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:

• Invest in Our New York is a local coalition project of the Citizen Action Network, a voter mobilization group and an affiliate of People’s Action. Invest in Our New York was created in 2021 to support the Invest In Our New York Act. As of 2025, the group is made up of over 80 coalition members including One Fair Wage, Rise and Resist, Tenants Political Action Committee, Worker Justice Center of New York, and two New York State branches of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA). The coalition’s steering committee includes Make the Road New York, Alliance for Quality Education, Strong Economy for All Coalition, Housing Justice for All, New York Communities for Change, and Community Voices Heard.
• Keshet is a left-of-center activist group that promotes youth and educational programming for LGBT Jewish activism. Idit Klein, the president and CEO of the group, also sits on the board of the Jewish Social Justice Roundtable. Klein has announced that she will be leaving Keshet at the end of July 2025. According to its 2024 annual report, Keshet has received grants from organizations that include the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, Crown Family Philanthropies, the Klarman Family Foundation, the Krupp Family Foundation, and the UJA-Federation of New York.
• Zell Family Foundation is a private family foundation established in 1986 in Chicago by the late real estate investor and billionaire Sam Zell. As of 2025, his wife Helen Zell is the president of the foundation. She has also served on the boards of the Steppenwolf Theatre, the Chicago Public Education Fund, Teach for America, and other organizations. In 2023, the Zell Family Foundation awarded over $133 million in grants, including $200,000 to A Better Chicago, $100,000 to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) Foundation, $1.35 million to the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, $2.2 million to the University of Chicago, and $750,000 to Teach for America.
• Black Researchers Collective is a Chicago-based organization that advocates for policies and community-based training it claims will “advance racial equity.” It has previously received funding from organizations that include Chicago Beyond, the Chicago Community Trust and Affiliates, the Joyce Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the K. Kellogg Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation. Glenance Green, a co-founder and executive director of the group, previously worked as a researcher for the American Institutes for Research and as a campaign worker for Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign.
• Jhpiego is a nonprofit founded by Johns Hopkins University in 1973 through a grant from the S. Agency for International Development(USAID). The group has reportedly received at least $94 million annually from government grants and federal funding since 2011, primarily through USAID. In addition, Jhpiego has received funding from several nonprofit organizations including the Patrick J. McGovern Foundation and the Gates Foundation.