How much did George Soros and Open Society Foundations spend on U.S. political causes between 2020 and 2024?

1. What the sources actually document about overall spending

Public reporting and the foundations’ own web material show very large, multi‑billion dollar flows: CNN reported that OSF “has spent more than $24 billion, of which $1.2 billion was spent in 2024,” a figure framed as global expenditures and not U.S.-specific political spending ^[1]. Wikipedia and OSF profiles likewise record cumulative expenditures in excess of $24 billion since the network’s founding and list regional 2024 spending totals ^{[2] [3]}. Those numbers establish scale but do not by themselves translate into a specific U.S. political‑causes subtotal for 2020–2024 ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What counts as “U.S. political causes” and why that matters

The sources show that OSF funds a broad mix of activity — civil‑society grants, legal and policy advocacy, democracy and voting‑rights work, research, and some grants to U.S. organizations — but they also emphasize that not all grants are direct political campaign spending, and reporting repeatedly stresses that OSF’s mission is grantmaking for rights and justice rather than running electoral campaigns ^{[3] [4]}. Critics and watchdogs frame certain grants as political influence; OSF and defenders say many grants are nonpartisan civic or policy work. The definitional boundary between “political causes” and “civic/philanthropic” activity is contested and not reconciled in the source material ^{[4] [5]}.

3. Verifiable, itemized political contributions from Soros and related entities

For individual political giving and campaign-related disbursements that are FEC‑reportable, OpenSecrets and Ballotpedia capture specific transactions: for example, Soros contributed to Democracy PAC ahead of the 2020 cycle, with $5 million given in 2019 (reported on Ballotpedia) — a contribution that directly targeted U.S. electoral politics ^[6]. OpenSecrets records itemized PAC and individual donations where filings exist, but the Soros network includes many grantmaking intermediaries and nonprofits whose spending is not consolidated in FEC data alone, limiting the ability to sum “political” spending from those filings alone ^{[7] [8]}.

4. Estimates, disputes, and missing pieces in the public record

Conservative critics and watchdogs have published alternative tallies and allegations — for example, the Capital Research Center’s claim about tens of millions in funding it labels extremist or political, and later critiques repackaged by other outlets — but those reports mix categorization and selective attribution, and they do not provide a reconciled, evidence‑traceable total for 2020–2024 political spending in the sources provided ^{[9] [10]}. Meanwhile, OSF’s own reporting gives regional and annual program expenditures (e.g., Europe, Middle East figures for 2024) but not a consolidated line item that equals “U.S. political causes, 2020–2024” ^[3].

5. Bottom line and transparent limitations

The defensible answer from the reporting at hand is twofold and candid: first, OSF’s scale is large — the network has spent more than $24 billion historically and reportedly spent $1.2 billion in 2024 alone — but those numbers are global, not a U.S. political‑only subtotal ^{[1] [2]}. Second, some discrete U.S. political expenditures are documented (for example, Soros’s multimillion contributions to Democracy PAC and itemizable FEC filings captured by OpenSecrets and Ballotpedia), yet the sources do not provide a single, source‑verified aggregate for “U.S. political causes” across 2020–2024 ^{[6] [7]}. Any precise dollar figure beyond these documented pieces would require access to consolidated OSF grant accounting filtered for U.S. political purpose or an independent audit, neither of which appears in the provided reporting ^{[3] [2]}.