# Capital Research Center The **Capital Research Center (CRC)** is a conservative Washington, D.C. think tank founded in 1984 whose principal function is **opposition research on left-of-center philanthropy, advocacy organizations, and dark money**. It is the right's structural mirror of the left-side funding-transparency operations like Maplight, Issue One, OpenSecrets, and CRP — except that where those orgs broadly track money across the spectrum, CRC's editorial focus is explicitly on documenting and critiquing left-side institutional funders and advocacy operations. CRC's most visible product is **[InfluenceWatch](https://www.influencewatch.org/)**, an online encyclopedia launched in 2017 that maintains thousands of profiles of left-of-center foundations, advocacy organizations, donor networks, individual donors, and elected officials. InfluenceWatch is the most widely used reference work for conservative researchers, journalists, and political operators investigating progressive funding flows. ## Founding and Mission CRC was founded in 1984 by Willa Johnson, a former Reagan administration official, and Reed Larson. The founding premise — that conservatives needed their own institutional capacity to track and analyze left-wing institutional funding — was a direct response to the perception that mainstream foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, MacArthur, later Open Society) were systematically funding progressive movement infrastructure without conservative-side scrutiny. The org expanded substantially in the 2010s and 2020s as the **[[Arabella Advisors]] / [[Sixteen Thirty Fund]] dark-money pool** on the left grew, and as conservative researchers needed structured intelligence on entities like Arabella's fiscally sponsored advocacy network. CRC's *Influence Watch* profiles of Arabella entities became foundational reference material for the broader conservative dark-money critique. ## Programmatic Output - **InfluenceWatch** — the encyclopedia (most-used CRC product) - **Foundation Watch / Organization Trends** — newsletters profiling individual entities - **Green Watch** — environmental movement funding analysis - **Labor Watch** — public-employee unions and progressive labor advocacy - **Compassion & Culture** — religious left and "social justice" philanthropy analysis - **Investigations** — multi-month projects on specific funding networks (Arabella, ActBlue, climate philanthropy, etc.) The output is consistent: a methodologically careful, footnoted, donor-sourced critique of left-side institutional funding designed to provide conservative journalists and policy operators with usable opposition research material. ## Funding CRC is funded by the standard conservative-foundation infrastructure: - [[Bradley Foundation]] - [[Sarah Scaife Foundation]] - [[DonorsTrust]] - [[John M. Olin Foundation]] (historically) - Smaller conservative family foundations Funding patterns are typical of mid-tier movement-conservative orgs: a stable foundation base supplemented by individual donors. ## KB Significance CRC matters to the KB for two structural reasons: 1. **The asymmetry problem in reverse.** The KB heavily documents how conservative dark money operates and how progressive watchdogs (OpenSecrets, ProPublica, *Mother Jones*) track it. CRC is the **mirror operation** — and tracking what CRC tracks is useful for understanding how the conservative movement perceives the left's institutional capacity, and where it builds its own counter-narratives. 2. **InfluenceWatch as a source.** For research on left-side organizations the KB needs to cover (when, for example, mapping the [[Open Society Foundations]] funding footprint), InfluenceWatch is one of the more comprehensive — if explicitly partisan — reference works. Used critically and triangulated with neutral sources, it is a legitimate research input. CRC is also a useful illustration of **operator continuity in the conservative ecosystem**: a small, durable, niche-specialized org that has run continuously for four decades on consistent foundation funding, producing a stable product line that the broader movement reliably consumes. ## See Also - [[DonorsTrust]] — major funder - [[Bradley Foundation]] — major funder - [[Arabella Advisors]] — frequent CRC target - [[Sixteen Thirty Fund]] — frequent CRC target - [[Open Society Foundations]] — frequent CRC target - [[Heritage Foundation]] — peer movement institution - [[Think Tank Ecosystem]] — broader ecosystem hub - [[Dark Money Ecosystem]] — what CRC tracks (on the left side)