Fact check: Who funds Project 2025 and which donors support the Heritage Foundation?

1. Clear Claims: Who’s Being Accused of Bankrolling a Conservative Blueprint?

The central claim across the materials is that six billionaire family fortunes — identified in reporting as the Coors, Koch, Uihlein, Scaife, Seid, and Bradley families — have funneled substantial sums into the ecosystem supporting Project 2025, with the figure cited at over $120 million flowing into advisory groups since 2020. This claim appears repeatedly in investigative summaries and nonprofit-tracking write-ups that link those family networks to a cluster of conservative policy shops and project-aligned advisory bodies ^[1]. Reporting also asserts that the Heritage Foundation is a principal institutional hub for those advisory activities, positioning the organization as a major recipient of the funding streams backing Project 2025’s planning and playbooks ^[1]. These statements frame Project 2025 not as a lone think-tank product but as the outcome of coordinated, well-resourced philanthropic networks.

2. How Donor-Advised Funds and Financial Firms Changed the Money Trail

Separate analyses emphasize that donor-advised funds (DAFs) at Fidelity, Schwab, and Vanguard acted as conduits for large, less-visible gifts, with a combined total cited at roughly $171 million to Project 2025-related groups since 2020 and Fidelity alone reported to have routed over $82 million to 68 groups ^{[2] [3]}. These reports stress the functional difference between direct family gifts and DAF-mediated contributions: DAFs allow wealthy donors to give through pooled, often anonymized accounts held at major asset managers, which changes transparency and timing of public disclosure. The sources portray major financial firms as institutional facilitators rather than ideological principals; however, the practical effect is the same — substantial resources flow into Project 2025-aligned organizations with limited public line-of-sight into original donor identities ^{[2] [3]}. That distinction raises policy questions about disclosure and accountability even when the recipient organizations are public.

3. The Heritage Foundation: Institutional Role and Funding Profile

Fund-tracking material on the Heritage Foundation indicates that the bulk of its 2024 revenues came from organizations rather than individuals, with a cited split of approximately 96.37% organizational funding to 3.63% individual contributions for that year ^[4]. Reporting also casts the Heritage Foundation as a key recipient and operational partner within the Project 2025 architecture, receiving both programmatic support and direct donor gifts aligned with the families and DAF flows identified by investigators ^[1]. These facts combine to depict Heritage as both an ideological and financial nexus: a think tank that drafts policy blueprints while drawing large institutional philanthropy into the same policy initiatives. That convergence explains why inquiries into Project 2025’s backers repeatedly point to the Foundation as a focal point for both strategy and funding.

4. Conflicting Emphases and Potential Agendas in the Coverage

Different pieces emphasize alternative mechanisms and actors: some coverage foregrounds family-led direct philanthropy and identifies named dynasties as the principal funders, while other reporting stresses the transformative role of DAFs and asset managers in obscuring donor identities and increasing dollar volumes ^{[1] [2] [3]}. The family-focused narrative highlights ideological continuity and strategic intent tied to conservative dynasties; the DAF-focused narrative frames the issue as a structural transparency problem in modern philanthropy. Both lines of reporting rely on financial-tracking methods but carry distinct implications for public understanding — one points to concentrated political influence, the other to regulatory gaps enabling large-scale anonymous giving. Readers should note these different emphases, as they indicate varying investigative priorities and potential advocacy aims behind the coverage ^{[1] [2]}.

5. What We Know, What’s Still Unclear, and Where to Look Next

The available reports consistently establish three facts: ^[5] Project 2025 has received substantial funding linked to a handful of wealthy families; ^[6] major financial firms’ DAFs have been significant vehicles for those funds; and ^[7] the Heritage Foundation is a major institutional recipient and coordinating partner ^{[1] [2] [4]}. Gaps remain in public disclosure of precise donor identities behind specific DAF gifts and in a comprehensive, line-item accounting that connects named family foundations, DAF grants, and recipient program budgets. Follow-up avenues include detailed tax filings (Form 990s), DAF grant databases, and investigative reporting that cross-references donor foundation filings with recipient institutional records to map flows with greater granularity; those records would either corroborate or refine the current totals and attributions cited in recent investigations ^{[1] [3]}.