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What policy organizations or donors publicly endorsed and financed Project 2025 in 2023-2024?
Executive Summary
Project 2025 drew public endorsements and active participation from a large constellation of conservative policy groups in 2023–2024, with the Heritage Foundation centrally organizing a coalition that it described as 75 partners in October 2023 and later as more than 100 contributors by mid‑2024. Investigations and reporting during 2023–2024 also document substantial philanthropic flows into Project 2025 advisory groups—investigators attribute more than $120 million funneled to affiliated organizations by six billionaire family fortunes since 2020, and Heritage grant disclosures show at least $965,000 of $1.67 million in 2022 grants went to advisory organizations aligned with the project [1] [2] [3] [4].
1. Who publicly endorsed and joined the Project 2025 coalition — a conservative network growing into a policy engine
The Heritage Foundation positioned itself as the hub for Project 2025, publicly announcing 75 coalition partners on October 10, 2023, and by mid‑2024 reporting a network exceeding 100 conservative organizations contributing to the project’s policy proposals. The publicly named partners and contributors include legacy and activist conservative groups such as the Heritage Foundation itself, Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Legislative Exchange Council, America First Legal, and the Center for Renewing America; these names recur across the coalition lists and mainstream reporting on the initiative [1] [2] [5]. This self‑reported coalition framing emphasizes institutional breadth and readiness to supply personnel and policy templates for a future conservative administration, a message Heritage amplified in its October 2023 announcement [1].
2. Financial threads: documented grants and the investigative tally of billionaire funding
Public filings and investigative reporting from 2023–2024 present two complementary financial pictures: the Heritage Foundation’s disclosed grants show $1.67 million distributed in 2022, with $965,000 earmarked for organizations on Project 2025’s advisory board, while independent mapping projects attribute over $120 million in contributions to advisory and affiliated groups from six billionaire family fortunes since 2020 [3] [4] [6]. The two datasets differ in scale and focus—Heritage’s disclosure documents grants it paid directly in a single year to advisory partners, whereas the mappings aggregate multi‑year flows into a broader set of organizations that populate Project 2025’s ecosystem—together they indicate both institutional grantmaking and concentrated wealthy benefactor influence on groups associated with the project [3] [6].
3. Divergent framings: organizers’ outreach versus investigators’ concerns
Project 2025’s organizers and participating conservative groups frame the effort as a coordinated, substantive policy playbook prepared by coalition partners to staff and govern efficiently. The Heritage Foundation’s October 2023 messaging focused on coalition growth and policy readiness [1]. Investigative outlets and analysts framed the same network as a vehicle heavily supported by major philanthropic fortunes and “dark‑money” conduits, stressing the role of wealthy donors and foundations in shaping the advisory apparatus and funding participating organizations [4] [3]. These opposing framings reflect divergent agendas: coalition statements emphasize policy capacity and personnel planning, while investigative pieces emphasize financial concentration and influence behind the policy network [1] [4] [3].
4. What the disclosed numbers do — and do not — prove about funding for Project 2025
Disclosed Heritage grants and investigative aggregations establish that significant money reached organizations affiliated with Project 2025, but they do not provide a single, transparent accounting that ties a dollar directly to the project’s outputs. Heritage’s grant figures show specific institutional investments in advisory organizations in 2022, yet the Foundation’s broader funding mix and non‑itemized project spending remain opaque, limiting precise attribution of project costs [3] [7]. Meanwhile, aggregated donor mappings that attribute over $120 million to Project 2025‑linked groups since 2020 document large flows into the ecosystem but rely on linking donors to organizations rather than line‑item project budgets, leaving room for debate about how funds were earmarked or used across the participating groups [3] [6].
5. What to watch next and how to evaluate competing claims
To assess endorsement and financing more definitively, observers should track new financial disclosures, partner lists, and grant reports from coalition members and foundations, while weighing the motivations of the sources reporting those facts: project organizers emphasize coalition reach and policy readiness, mainstream reporters catalog participants, and investigative outlets focus on concentrated donor influence [1] [2] [4] [3]. The factual baseline from 2023–2024 shows a broad conservative coalition led by Heritage and a documented pattern of major philanthropic support to affiliated organizations; reconciling the scale and intent of that support requires continued scrutiny of grant disclosures and organizational budgets to move from association to direct funding attribution [3] [7] [6].