People’s Welfare Association (PWA)

Independent researchers have identified this unusual grantmaking pattern as one way in which PSF may be using PWA to effectively conceal its foreign grantees from normal disclosure practices due to PWA’s disclosure requirements as a nonprofit organization other than a private foundation. ⁶ In its 2021-2022 fiscal year, PWA made $19,182,000 of grants to undisclosed recipients outside of the United States. ⁷

History and Leadership

People’s Welfare Association (PWA) was formed in 2019 ² and received tax-exempt status from the Internal Revenue Service in 2020. ⁸

PWA is based in Madison, Wisconsin, ⁹ and led by a group of directors with experience in a critical race theory-influenced concept of social justice, education advocacy, and agricultural capacity-building. Kristine Krouth, Ivan Orosa Paleo, and Phil Baruch Gottleib are the three members of PWA’s executive board. ¹⁰

Activities

People’s Welfare Association is a left-of-center grantmaking organization that aims to promote what it considers “social, economic, cultural, environmental, and human development.” PWA claims to support the rights of people whom it considers have had their rights historically denied and claims to empower these groups through funding education, media, and capacity-building efforts. ¹¹ Other PWA funding efforts have supported the concept of “critical consciousness,” investigative media, and environmentalist agricultural practices. ¹²

PWA supports a critical race theory-influenced concept of social justice and a variety of projects through its grantmaking activities around the world. ¹⁰

Grantmaking

People’s Welfare Association makes grants exclusively to recipients in foreign countries. From May 2019 to May 2022, PWA made grants worth at least $50,888,520 to overseas organizations. Due to the nature of the Form 990 tax return, PWA has never been required to identify these foreign recipients. ⁶

In its 2021-2022 fiscal year, all of PWA’s $19,182,000 in grantmaking went to undisclosed recipients outside of the United States. These grants included $8,471,000 to organizations in Sub-Saharan Africa, $8,449,000 to organizations in South America, $1,817,000 to organizations in Europe, and $445,000 to organizations in Central America and the Caribbean. ⁷

Funding

Since its founding, a significant amount of People’s Welfare Association funding has come from the left-of-center People’s Support Foundation (PSF). ¹ PWA received grants from PSF totaling $14,886,720 in 2022, ³ $14,354,500 in 2021, ⁴ and $10,338,000 in 2020, respectively. ^{13 3}

Independent researchers have identified this distinctive grantmaking pattern as one way in which PSF may be using PWA to effectively conceal its foreign grantees from disclosure. ^{6 7}

In 2022, PWA received $1,284,000 from the left-of-center Justice and Education Fund. ¹⁴ From 2019 until 2021, PWA received a total of $8,148,000 from the Justice and Education Fund, including $3,427,000 in 2020. ^{15 6 6}