Gamaliel Foundation

Gamaliel’s campaigns address criminal justice, immigration issues, and race issues. ³ It has advocated government-run health care, housing subsidies, increased funding for public transportation, increased funding for welfare programs, and for prohibiting the enforcement of immigration laws. ²

Multiple Gamaliel affiliates have adopted names that use biblical acronyms and identify as Christian organizations while serving as left-of-center political advocacy organizations. ⁴ Right-of-center critics have objected to Gamaliel using religious doctrine to ground its advocacy while contradicting Christian teachings opposed to American left-of-center politics, and the group has lost partnerships with the Catholic Church after advocating the inclusion of abortion coverage in federally funded health care. ²

Background

Originally named the Contract Buyers League, the Gamaliel Foundation was originally founded in 1968 by famous left-wing agitator Saul Alinsky to assist African-American home buyers in Chicago’s West Side. In 1986 under its then-executive-director Gregory Galluzzo, it reorganized and renamed itself as the Gamaliel Foundation, taking its name from the Pharisee Gamaliel from the Bible in Acts 5:39. ⁵

After changing its name, Gamaliel began training activists to develop and grow advocacy groups in low-income areas. Galluzzo was also the founder of the United Neighborhood Organization, a Chicago-based organizing group focusing on Hispanic interests. ⁶

Gamaliel operates as the central organizer of its affiliate organizations. As of June 2026, it reported on its website that it had 43 affiliate organizations across 14 states and did not list any international organizations. ⁷ However, among the listed affiliate organizations were numerous seemingly defunct groups with websites that have been taken down. Amongst the seven affiliate members listed under its Illinois affiliates, four were defunct or otherwise inactive, including Gamaliel of Metro Chicago, Pastors Organized with Equity and Respect (POWER), the South Suburban Action Conference (SSAC), and United Congregations of Metro East (UCM). ⁸

Structure

Organizations that are affiliated with the Gamaliel Foundation typically incorporate as independent nonprofit organizations, fundraise independently, and operate independently while supporting Gamaliel initiatives. ⁹ Affiliates attend paid training sessions hosted by Gamaliel where they are trained on activist organizing and on how to recruit church congregations to participate in their advocacy campaigns. ¹⁰ In 2024, Gamaliel affiliate Faith Coalition for the Common Good (FCCG) was paid $32,540 to attend Gamaliel trainings. ¹¹

Gamaliel Foundation has made direct grants to its various affiliates and has offered training programs to communities with the hope that they would form an advocacy organization that affiliates with Gamaliel. ⁵

Gamaliel uses the low-income status of its affiliate members and affiliate church congregations to present its advocacy as representative of low-income individuals.  ⁵

Critics have also argued that Gamaliel’s affiliate network is designed to make its national advocacy initiatives appear as though the affiliates and the communities they represent to be the origin of their advocacy initiatives, concealing Gamaliel’s involvement. Additionally, reporting on affiliate organization advocacy efforts have been noted to neglect Gamaliel’s involvement by failing to mention that it is an affiliate or that the group is acting in concert with Gamaliel as the leader of the advocacy initiative. ¹²

To present as religious organizations, Gamaliel affiliates select names that form a biblical acronym, which critics argue serve as a means to hide their political motives. ¹³

For example, the Niagara Gazette wrote an article about how Gamaliel affiliate, the Niagara Organizing Alliance for Hope (NOAH), held a public meeting calling for an extension of a $5 billion tax.¹⁴¹⁵

Other examples of these names include Interfaith Strategy for Advocacy and Action in the Community (ISAAC) in Kalamazoo, Michigan; the now-defunct Joint Religious Organizing Network for Action and Hope (JONAH) in Battle Creek, Michigan;¹⁸ Metropolitan Organizing Strategy Enabling Strength (MOSES) in Detroit; and Justice Organization Sharing Hope and United for Action (JOSHUA) in Green Bay, Wisconsin. ¹⁶ Beyond acronyms, it also has included non-acronymic biblically inspired names such as the Ezekiel Project, a now-apparently-defunct organization that Gamaliel included as a listed affiliate as of June 2026. ¹⁷

Issue Areas

Immigration

The Gamaliel Foundation’s Civil Rights of Immigrants (CRI) campaign advocated for the Biden administration to end immigration enforcement, abolish detention centers and prisons used to detain and jail suspected illegal immigrants, approve work status for all migrants, provide opportunities to obtain citizenship for all migrants, and to provide migrants of any status access to COVID-19 relief. ¹⁸

Gamaliel’s CRI campaign is supported by Gamaliel’s “Theological Statement on Complete and Inclusive Immigration Reform” (Theological Statement). ¹⁸ The Theological Statement started by promoting the idea that people of all nationalities, ethnicities, and genders are “one human family sharing one planet blessed by one great Source of all creation.” It proceeded to state that migration is natural for all “living beings” and is caused by climate change, economic issues, and political changes. The Theological Statement concluded that unrestricted immigration is necessary to address “human suffering” and added that the U.S. is morally obligated to accept all immigrants without mentioning a theological basis other than that all humans are equal. It also condemned the United States for having “a history of stealing lands and a genocide of indigenous peoples,” “stealing” slaves from Africa, and allegedly using white supremacy to oppress racial minorities. ¹⁹

Gamaliel’s Theological Statement on immigration calls for religious groups to provide aid to immigrants, for policymakers to end so-called “racist and xenophobic immigration policies” by eliminating restrictions on immigration and naturalization processes, for the end of deportations, and for religious groups to support Gamaliel’s immigration advocacy. ¹⁹

Infrastructure Spending

Gamaliel’s “Transportation Equity” campaign oversees and founded the Transportation Equity Network (TEN), a coalition of 350 organizations across 41 states as of June 2026. TEN advocates for increased infrastructure spending on mass transit systems, public transportation, highways, and railways to address socio-economic, race, health, environmental, and energy issues. It has supported policies that would allow localities to have control over federally funded infrastructure projects and for policies that would implement gender and ethnicity hiring quotas for publicly funded infrastructure projects. As of June 2026, TEN’s website is no longer active, but it remains listed as an active campaign of Gamaliel. ²⁰

“Fire of Faith:  Rekindling Our Congregations, Rekindling Our Economy, Rekindling Our Democracy” is a Gamaliel project that began in 2012 at an affiliate meeting that advocated for the creation of 1 million purportedly “living wage jobs” by 2015 through government transit projects. The project provided faith-inspired campaign materials for affiliate members to use in support of the initiative, including flyers, infographics, meeting talking points, and language to use in their campaigns. ^{21 22}

Voter Mobilization

Ntosake is a voter mobilization project that was created by Gamaliel in 2001 targeting women voters. ²³

In 2024, Gamaliel affiliate Bridge Maryland reported receiving $8,000 from Gamaliel to conduct “integrated voter engagement,” according to Bridge Maryland’s tax returns. ²⁴ Founded in 2017, Bridge Maryland Ntosake Pride is Bridge Maryland’s Ntosake-affiliated campaign that conducts voter registration trainings and programs and uses church announcements to advertise its voter registration initiatives. Additionally, it has conducted voter mobilization mailing and phone banking campaigns and hosted voter registration events. ²³

Employment

The “100 Ready Workers” Campaign was a Gamaliel project organized through “The South Suburban Action Conference (SSAC) and Gamaliel of Metro Chicago (GMC)” and served to recruit ordinary individuals to pressure unions, elected officials, and employers to hire ethnic minorities at an increased rate. ²⁵

Criminal Justice

The Gamaliel Foundation’s Transformational Justice in Action campaign advocates criminal justice policies that would undo the penalties created by the 1994 Crime Bill. It also opposes the public funding of prisons and the use of incarceration as a form of punishment. The campaign argues that the 1994 Crime Bill’s provisions for funding prisons incentivized increased arrest rates. ²⁶

Gamaliel used the COVID-19 pandemic to advocate decarceration, claiming that low-income individuals and ethnic minorities were most vulnerable to the pandemic and disproportionately punished by incarceration. It added that because Black people were believed to be infected and killed by the virus at higher rates, and with the trend increasing in prisons, it advocated for the early release of prisoners and opposed incarcerating new offenders. ²⁷

In addition, Gamaliel advocates for decarceration on the grounds that it allegedly perpetuates poverty cycles and exacerbates race issues, particularly the relatively low socio-economic status of ethnic minorities. ²⁷

Education

Gamaliel has partnered with groups such as the American Federation of Teachers  to implement education campaigns that promoted the use of schools and public education to address race issues and to advocate for the increased funding of public schools and early childhood education. ²⁸ Gamaliel has advocated for ending suspensions and expulsions due to ethnic minorities having higher rates of disciplinary infractions, and the group promotes social-emotional learning (SEL) programs as an alternative to discipline. ²⁹

Criticism from the Catholic Church

High-ranking church leaders and religious organizations have spoken out against theF Gamaliel Foundation. In March 2010, David Ricken, at the time the Roman Catholic Bishop of Green Bay, wrote a letter regarding Gamaliel that stated, “it is clear to me that principles of the Gamaliel Foundation are inconsistent with the tenets of our Catholic Social Teaching. It is not fitting for a Catholic entity to enter into a formal association with another organization when there is such a conflict of principles.” ⁵

Ricken’s letter was prompted by Gamaliel’s efforts to prop up a health-care coalition that supported abortion coverage by government-funded health-care programs ⁵

Criticisms from Former Staff

According to an account by a former Gamaliel Foundation staffer, who claimed to have been mentored by Gamaliel leader Greg Galluzo, “He [Galluzo] felt that organizers should fight fire with fire” and would “give a cultish advanced training seminar titled ‘Walking the Edge of Immorality’ where he repeatedly stated ‘the ends justifies the means’ and nonchalantly told us that to have an impact on society we had to be willing to ‘lie, cheat, and steal for the greater good.’”³⁰

This former staffer elaborated, “I have never seen such a strange and warped culture anywhere”, where “staff were pitted against each other.” ³⁰ Ultimately, the former staffer said, “I left Gamaliel disillusioned and disgusted by what seemed to me to be pure evil.  How could a faith-based organization operate under such a skewed, cynical view of the world?”³⁰

Funding

The Gamaliel Foundation has been supported by the left-of-center donor network Democracy Alliance. ³¹ Moreover, Gamaliel’s funding comes from several left-leaning foundation grantmakers. Between 2000 and 2010, Gamaliel “received $3.4 million from the Ford Foundation, over $1.5 million from the Charles Stewart Mott Foundation, $525,000 from the Marguerite Casey Foundation, about $195,000 from George Soros’s Open Society Institute, $186,000 from the Tides Foundation, and $150,000 from the Bauman Family Foundation.” ⁵

Until 2017, the Gamaliel Foundation website maintained a list of donors. As of September 2017, the list included the following left-leaning foundations, labor unions and organizations: ³²

• Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU)
• American Federation of Teachers (AFT)
• Annie E. Casey Foundation
• Center for Community Change (CCC)
• Communications Workers of America (CWA)
• Council of Minority Transportation Officials
• Evangelical Lutheran Church of America
• Ford Foundation
• General Motors Foundation
• International Union of Painters and Allied Trades
• Public Welfare Foundation
• Schott Foundation for Public Education
• The Kresge Foundation
• United Auto Workers (UAW)
• K. Kellogg Foundation
• Wallace Genetic Foundation

People

In January 2026, Michael Atty was announced to be taking over as the third executive director in the Gamaliel Foundation’s history. ³³

Ana Garcia-Ashley worked as the executive director of the Gamaliel Foundation from 2011 to 2025. ^{34 35}She began working for Gamaliel in 1992 as the lead organizer of MICAH in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. ³⁶

Gregory Galluzzo was hired as the executive director of Gamaliel in 1986 and retired in 2017. He also founded the United Neighborhood Organization. During his tenure, he oversaw the reformation of the organization as a faith-based advocacy group that used the low-income status of church congregations to serve as the identity of Gamaliel’s left-of-center advocacy. ⁶

Gamaliel was founded by Saul Alinsky, an American community organizer who is often noted for his 1971 book, Rules for Radicals. ³⁷

The National Clergy Caucus, the African American Leadership Commission, and the International Leadership Assembly have been reported to have helped to advise the board and staff of the Gamaliel Foundation. ³⁸