How much of the total funding for project 2025 comes from the 6 billionaire families?
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Executive summary
DeSmog’s analysis finds foundations tied to six billionaire families — Bradley, Coors, Koch, Scaife, Seid and Uihlein — have given “over $122 million” since 2020 to groups connected to Project 2025, and DeSmog separately reports at least $171 million flowed to Project 2025 groups from donor-advised funds at Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard since 2020 (DeSmog data) [1] [2]. Available sources do not provide a single, definitive figure for “total funding” of Project 2025, so the share provided by the six families cannot be calculated precisely from current reporting [1] [2] [3].
1. What DeSmog actually measured — and what it didn’t
DeSmog’s investigative reporting documents that foundations linked to six billionaire families contributed “over $122 million” to Project 2025–connected groups since 2020, identified at least 290 donations and traced funding into 49 nonprofits tied to the Mandate for Leadership or Project 2025’s advisory board [1]. That $122 million is a sum of identified contributions to organizations that helped write or support Project 2025; it is not presented as a percentage of an overall Project 2025 budget because no comprehensive “total funding” tally for Project 2025 is published in the available reporting [1] [3].
2. Broader funding flows complicate any percentage calculation
DeSmog also reports that donor-advised funds at Fidelity, Schwab and Vanguard have funneled at least $171 million to nonprofits behind Project 2025 since 2020, showing significant additional money came through financial intermediaries rather than family foundations alone [2]. Because reporting captures multiple distinct pools of money — direct family foundations, donor-advised funds, other conservative networks — there is no single public ledger in the cited sources to serve as “total funding” for Project 2025 against which to compute a percent share [2] [1].
3. How news outlets and watchdogs frame influence
DeSmog and allied outlets frame the six families’ giving as concentrated influence: they say nearly 50 of 110 nonprofits formally supporting Project 2025 received major donations from the same six sources and note longstanding ties between those families and deregulatory, climate-denial organizing [4] [1]. The Guardian and other reporting amplify the picture of wealthy family foundations and allied networks bankrolling groups that produced Project 2025 policy recommendations, but these accounts stop short of publishing an audited “total Project 2025 budget” or a single-source breakdown of every dollar [5] [1].
4. What a calculated “share” would need
To state “X% of Project 2025 funding comes from the six billionaire families” requires (a) a defensible numerator — which DeSmog supplies as “over $122 million” in identified family-foundation gifts to Project‑linked groups — and (b) a defensible denominator — a complete, agreed total of all funding for Project 2025 and affiliated activity. Available reporting supplies the numerator but does not supply a comprehensive denominator; therefore any percent figure would be speculative without additional, documented totals [1] [2] [3].
5. Competing perspectives and implicit agendas
DeSmog’s work emphasizes connections between deep-pocketed conservative family foundations and Project 2025’s agenda, presenting these gifts as evidence of elite-directed policy shaping [1] [4]. Other coverage included in the dataset (e.g., Wikipedia’s Project 2025 entry) focuses on the policy prescriptions themselves rather than constructing a full funding audit; outlets with different editorial stances may stress either the legitimacy of philanthropy’s role in policy or the threat of concentrated influence [3] [1]. Readers should note DeSmog’s investigative mission to trace climate‑related funding and that donor-advised fund reporting highlights how some donations can be obscured in public data [2].
6. Bottom line and what to ask next
Current sources show the six families’ foundations gave “over $122 million” to Project‑linked groups since 2020 and donor-advised funds channeled at least $171 million to those nonprofits; they do not publish a single total for “all Project 2025 funding,” so the fraction attributable to these six families cannot be calculated from available reporting [1] [2]. To produce a verifiable percentage, journalists would need either an audited total of all funds supporting Project 2025 activities, or an exhaustive donor-level accounting that aggregates direct foundation gifts, DAF grants, dark‑money channels and allied network transfers into a single denominator — neither of which is found in current reporting [1] [2] [3].