Inside PESP’s Donor Network: Liberal Foundations & Labor Unions Fund “Watchdog” to Do Their Bidding

Posted: Feb 18, 2026

February 18, 2026

Highlights

From 2019-2025, funding for the Private Equity Stakeholder Project (PESP) has primarily come from liberal foundations and donor vehicles, including sustained support from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Network, and Omidyar Network, among others.
Many of PESP’s donors earmark their grants for specific projects like climate divestment and labor union pressure campaigns, sometimes failing to disclose who’s paying for the advocacy, according to media reports.
PESP has also taken funding from 501(c)(4) nonprofits including the Open Society Action Fund, support typically reserved for overt policy advocacy.

Millions From Liberal Foundations

PESP presents itself as a truly independent and data-focused watchdog, but its donor base clearly expects something different. From 2019-2025, PESP received major support from the Ford Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Omidyar Network, Surdna Foundation, and other progressive institutions, placing PESP within a liberal advocacy ecosystem rather than disinterested academic research or bipartisan policy analysis.

In 2023 alone, PESP took roughly $3.8 million in general support and program grants underwriting liberal priorities like climate accountability, corporate‑landlord campaigns, and investor‑pressure efforts. The pattern continued in 2024, with nearly $1 million coming from progressive foundations backing climate, housing, and healthcare policy.

How Advocacy & Donor Priorities Align

PESP’s stated grant purposes are explicit: “Fossil Asset Research,” “Tracking and challenging private equity investments in fossil fuels,” “corporate landlord accountability,” and “detention and surveillance” work. Combined with the donor slate, these earmarks situate PESP firmly inside a progressive funding ecosystem designed to pressure private equity across climate, housing, labor, and healthcare.

Climate and Divestment: Climate‑aligned funders, including Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Park Foundation, U.S. Energy Foundation, Growald Climate Fund, and the Flora Family Foundation, bankroll PESP efforts aimed at fossil‑fuel divestment and climate‑finance activism inside private equity. The objective is sustained pressure on firms, LPs, and policymakers to reshape markets to movement priorities.
Housing and Labor: PESP’s grants consistently target labor and housing campaigns. In 2024, the Ford Foundation gave PESP $250,000 for a “worker-focused research and campaign strategy on private equity.” Between 2023 and 2024, the California Endowment gave $300,000 for work to “track & challenge” evictions, rent hikes, and corporate landlords. The Butler Family Fund supported challenging “evictions, rent increases and foreclosures by corporate landlords during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.” Melville Charitable Trust, Freedom Together, Surdna Foundation, and Hopewell Fund help finance community and economic development efforts. These funders also back unions, civil‑rights litigation, housing‑justice groups, and progressive voter‑mobilization networks, placing PESP within an integrated advocacy infrastructure.
Healthcare and Market Regulation: The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has provided more than $1.7 million since 2021 for PESP campaigns targeting private equity in healthcare and affordable housing. These grants are designed to do more than fund research; they are meant to drive regulatory pressure, investor activism, and public campaigns.

Explicit Political Funding From 501(c)(4)s

PESP has also received support from 501(c)(4) donor Open Society Action Fund, a political advocacy arm of the Open Society Foundations, the global philanthropic network founded by billionaire investor George Soros.

Labor Union Funding, Pay-to-Play Advocacy

Beyond foundational support, PESP has received significant funding from labor unions, often in exchange for producing advocacy materials that align with union agendas, raising serious concern about transparency and pay-to-play dynamics. Department of Labor filings show payments from multiple unions, including the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW), the Writers Guild, the United Auto Workers (UAW), the Service Employees International Union (SEIU), and the Office and Professional Employee International Union (OPEIU). As multiple media reports over the past year make clear, these payments often coincided with PESP releasing reports supporting the paying unions’ interests, without disclosing the funding when publishing the materials or in their direct outreach to public pension bodies.

Conclusion

PESP is a strategically funded advocacy platform backed by liberal foundations, labor unions, and climate‑activist philanthropies with explicit instructions and objectives to advance those donors’ policy priorities. It’s vitally important to understand this context when evaluating its positions and recommendations.

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