Dustin Moskovitz and Cari Tuna
Moskovitz was Facebook’s first chief of technology, and when he left the company in 2008, he was the world’s youngest billionaire. As major philanthropists, he and Tuna have been at the forefront of the effective altruism movement, initially focusing grants largely on global health. Over time, they’ve expanded the scope of their giving through Open Philanthropy, a philanthropic vehicle created in collaboration with the charity advisory group GiveWell. The couple’s priorities include a number of issues on the national agenda, including criminal justice reform — now funded through a spin-off entity, Just Impact — and pandemic preparedness.
Moskovitz is especially passionate about influencing policy on the latter issue, giving more than $20 million to a center for biosecurity at Johns Hopkins University and underwriting similar work at Georgetown. In 2021, he was part of a group of tech leaders who pushed the Biden administration and Congress to set aside tens of billions for biosecurity. The effort failed, but top Democrats have good reason to listen when Moskovitz talks: He and Tuna gave nearly $70 million in the 2016 and 2020 election cycles, with funds going to the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, to voter engagement groups such as the League of Conservation Voters, and to Future Forward, a super PAC that used the money on pro-Biden TV ads.
Pierre and Pam Omidyar
While the eBay founder and his wife have been engaged in philanthropy for over two decades, they’ve notably stepped up their efforts to influence federal policy in recent years. The CEO of their main philanthropic vehicle, the Omidyar Network, works out of offices in D.C., which also houses an Omidyar-backed spinoff, the Democracy Fund. That group has made grants to a wide range of D.C.-based organizations in recent years and has been involved in battles over federal protections for voting rights, the 2020 census, and oversight in government.
Economic policy is another area where Omidyar funding is working to shape federal policy. Through its program on “reimagining capitalism,” the Omidyar Network has backed a number of Washington groups that are helping shape Biden’s tougher antimonopoly stance, as well as the administration’s push to strengthen workers’ rights. Omidyar has also backed groups looking to rein in Wall Street. Grantees include Americans for Financial Reform, Better Markets, Center for American Progress, Community Change, and the Economic Security Project. The Omidyar Network amplifies its influence by operating as an LLC, allowing it to move both c3 and c4 funding.
Barbara Picower
The widow of the financier Jeffery Picower, who was famously embroiled in the Bernie Madoff scandal, has become a powerhouse funder of progressive policy work in Washington and beyond through her JPB Foundation. This grantmaker, which moves over $300 million in grants a year, is something of a dream for Beltway groups in that it often makes seven-figure donations. Top recipients of its largesse include the Advancement Project, Center for American Progress, Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, Community Change and Faith in Action. JPB also supports a who’s who of other stalwart liberal groups with a big presence in D.C. policy battles, such as Planned Parenthood, NAACP Legal Defense Fund and the Sierra Club.
Picower and JPB’s other leaders rarely speak publicly about the foundation’s strategy, but grants reveal its support for work on nearly every hot-button issue before Congress — including immigration, voting rights and climate change. JPB also invests heavily in movement-building, looking to build outside pressure on government policymakers as well as tilt electoral outcomes — with grants going to the Center for Popular Democracy, a top hub of progressive organizing, Sunrise Movement and the Movement Strategy Center. This spring, Picower stepped down from her reportedly active role as president of JPB, where she’ll now be president emerita. Succeeding Picower is Deepak Bhargava, former longtime head of Community Change and a skilled progressive leader who knows his way around Washington.
Eric and Wendy Schmidt
The former CEO of Google, Schmidt and his wife Wendy founded the Schmidt Family Foundation in 2006, and then Schmidt Futures in 2017. While Wendy is the main driver of the couple’s extensive environmental giving, Eric’s work on scientific issues has made him a quiet power player in Washington. Schmidt helped Bill Clinton launch the first White House website, and campaigned for Obama and advised his team on tech issues in 2012. In 2018, he chaired a national commission on AI, nominated by the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee. Last December, leaders of the Armed Services Committee also named Schmidt to an 11-member biotech advisory commission. In recent years, Schmidt has called for the Pentagon to move more quickly to adapt new technologies and warned that the U.S. is falling behind in its competition with China in areas like AI and quantum computing. For years, he served as board chair of New America, a prominent Washington think tank.
Schmidt has exerted significant influence in the Biden administration. He reportedly has used Schmidt Futures to influence a small but powerful executive branch agency, the Office of Science and Technology Policy. According to Politico, nearly 10% of the agency’s staff has ties to Schmidt. Schmidt Futures helped pay the salaries of at least two senior OSTP officials and the foundation has also provided money for staffers to attend scientific conferences — funding that has raised conflict of interest questions at the agency. Schmidt has given millions to Democratic Party committees, candidates and related electoral groups over many years.
Barre Seid
This wealthy businessman was virtually unknown until last year, when news broke that he had transferred business assets worth $1.6 billion to a 501(c)(4) group controlled by the conservative strategist Leonard Leo. That massive donation came on the heels of years of anonymous giving to right-wing nonprofits at both the federal and state level, which totaled at least $775 million between 1996 and 2018, according to ProPublica.
Seid’s quiet but immense policy giving hammers home the fact that any list like this one is inherently incomplete. Particularly, but not exclusively, conservative mega-donors have often funded D.C. work through less-visible channels, supplementing a robust stream of smaller donations to right-leaning policy groups.
Meanwhile, details are sketchy on which Washington-based groups Seid has funded or how the new funds controlled by Leo are being used. But Seid is known to be keenly interested in moving the federal judiciary to the right and was reportedly the anonymous donor behind a $20 million gift to George Mason University to name its law school after the late Justice Antonio Scalia. Seid is also said to have been a major donor to the Heartland Institute — a group that, although based outside D.C. in a suburb of Chicago, has helped to influence federal climate policy by casting doubt on climate science.
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