Rockefeller Brothers Fund

The Fund has contributed to numerous anti-Israel organizations including those that support the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement that favors breaking off economic and social ties to the Jewish state. ² In addition, Israeli diplomats allege that the Fund has contributed to several organizations with ties to Palestinian terrorist groups including U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). ^{3 4}

Background

Origins

For the first 25 years of its existence, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund largely pursued the philanthropic interests of the brothers. Laurance was interested in conservation, so the fund bought land trusts in Wyoming that extended the basis of Grand Teton National Park. Nelson Rockefeller persuaded the fund to donate to the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. John D. Rockefeller III was interested in population control, so the fund supported the Population Council. ⁵

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s greatest influence came in the late 1950s when it published a series of reports concerning America’s foreign and domestic policies. According to Nelson Rockefeller biographer Joseph E. Persico, the fund’s 1958 report Prospect for America was so influential “that during the 1960 election, both parties lifted from it for their platforms. The very emblem of the Kennedy administration was taken from a section of the Rockefeller Brothers’ report entitled ‘The New Frontiers.” ⁵

Later History

In the late 1970s, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund had a crisis over donor intent. After serving as U.S. Vice President, Nelson Rockefeller returned to philanthropy in 1977. He said that he should be chairman and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and that half of the fund’s $190 million endowment should support the capital campaigns of 25 organizations the Rockefellers had long favored, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Population Council, and Rockefeller University. ⁶

Nelson Rockefeller’s death in 1979 ended the effort by the Rockefeller brothers to control the foundation. But between 1970 and 1981, the fund donated $100 million, or half its endowment, to 18 organizations the family had long favored, including Rockefeller University, the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, and Sleepy Hollow Restorations, which restored historic homes near the Rockefellers’ family estate in Westchester County, New York. These grants, New York Times reporter Peter Kihss wrote in 1979, were terminal ones. “The intent in most cases,” Kihss wrote, “was that the Brothers Fund would be ending its major responsibility to the institutions, basically leaving them—facing the inroads of inflation—to make their own way.” ⁶

Activities

Environmentalism

By 2014, about half of Rockefeller Brothers Fund grantmaking was concerned with climate change. The fund voted to divest its endowment of all investments in fossil fuels.  In an interview with The Guardian, the fund’s chair, Valerie Rockefeller Wayne, daughter of former U.S. Senator John D. “Jay” Rockefeller IV (D-W.V.) said that the fund had been under some pressure from its grantees (most notably Carbon Tracker and 350.org) to divest and that the fund had a “moral obligation” to divest because “the money that is for our grantmaking, and what we are doing now, and that helps fund our lifestyles comes from dirty fossil sources.”⁷

Canadian journalist Vivian Krause has shown the effect of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s environmental grantmaking in Canada. In a 2016 article in the Financial Post, she charged that the fund was the lead donor, first through the Tides Foundation and then through the New Venture Fund, in a successful effort to limit energy production in Alberta. When then-Alberta Premier Rachel Notley in 2016 announced a cap on carbon emissions from oil production in that province, Krause wrote, “The Rockefellers got exactly what their funding paid for.” ⁸

Krause also reported that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, collaborating with the Moore Foundation, the Hewlett Foundation, and the Packard Foundation, used grants over several years to create the Great Bear Rainforest, a protected area on the west coast of British Columbia that is the size of Ireland. ⁹

Domestically, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund is also interested in restricting election-related speech. The fund donated $200,000 in 2008 and 2009 to Public Campaign (now the Every Voice Center), an organization seeking to ensure that nearly all of the money for political campaigns comes from the government.¹⁰

In July 2019, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund hosted a two-day meeting at the Rockefeller family mansion in Pocantico, New York that connected state-level energy officials with environmentalist groups including the Rocky Mountain Institute, the Georgetown Climate Center, and the Energy Foundation. The meeting included discussions on how to accelerate the elimination of natural gas and other conventional forms of energy and mandate their replacement with weather-dependent forms of energy. The discussions also included proposals for a carbon tax. Following the meeting, some state and local governments began promoting a ban on natural gas in new buildings. ¹¹

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund is a major supporter of the Rocky Mountain Institute, an environmentalist think tank that is a proponent of banning natural gas stoves, among other policies. In January 2023, the Rocky Mountain Institute published a study that linked gas stoves to asthma. The right-leaning Washington Times reported that the study did not include any new research but relied on past studies, some of which had been ridiculed. For example, one of the past studies tested the emissions from a gas stove in a room that had been completely sealed off by tarps. The day after the Rocky Mountain Institute released its study, Consumer Product Safety Commissioner Richard Trumka, Jr. threatened a federal ban on gas stoves, which the Consumer Product Safety Commission was forced to walk back after public outcry. ¹¹ In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $800,000 to the Rocky Mountain Institute. ¹²

The Rockefeller Brothers Fund signed the Donors of Colors Network’s Climate Funders Justice Pledge, which pledged to make the group’s climate-related grants transparent and to “direct at least 30 percent of that funding within two years to organizations that are run by, serving, and building power for communities of color and have majority-POC boards and senior staff as well as a justice lens.” By September 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund had surpassed the 30 percent goal. ¹³

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $550,000 to 2030 Inc. (Architecture 2030), an environmentalist group advocating for all buildings to be “carbon neutral” by 2030 and that supports other environmental regulations on the local, state, federal, and supranational level. Among the grants awarded was a grant to support work in China. ¹²

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $300,000 to the Resources Legacy Fund, a left-of-center environmental advocacy group. ¹²

Anti-Israel Activities

Since 2013, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund has contributed to numerous anti-Israel organizations. The Fund gave at least $880,000 to groups such as Jewish Voice for Peace, Zochrot, and the U.S. Campaign for Palestinian Rights that support the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement that favors breaking off economic and social ties to the Jewish state. ¹⁴ Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen B. Heintz, wrote in an email that such grants were needed to “end the fifty-year long occupation in order to bring justice, dignity, and freedom to all Israelis and Palestinians.” ¹⁵

Israeli diplomats have alleged that RBF has funneled money to organizations that support Palestinian extremist terrorism. According to then-Israeli Consul-General in New York Dani Dayan, RBF gave $30,000 in 2015 and $60,000 in 2017 to Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, also known as the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights which fiscally sponsors the Palestinian BDS National Committee. The BDS National Committee is the Palestinian branch of the international boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement; the Committee’s members include the Council of National Islamic Forces in Palestine, which includes the U.S. State Department-designated foreign terrorist organizations Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), Popular Front-General Command, Palestine Liberation Front, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. ¹⁶

RBF has also funded Defense for Children International-Palestine (DCI-P), an organization run by officials and board members with established ties to PFLP.  DCI-P general assembly president Nasser Ibrahim was the former editor of PFLP’s propaganda publication and has advocated for a Palestinian “right of resistance” including armed conflict. DCI-P director Rifat Odeh Kassis spoke at the funeral of a former DCI-P employee who had also fought as a PFLP insurgent. ¹⁶ From 2018 through 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund reportedly donated $165,000 to DCI-P. In October 2023, DCI-P published an article falsely claiming that Israel was responsible for an airstrike within the Gaza Strip during the ongoing Israel-Hamas conflict that struck a hospital which reportedly killed 500 people. ¹⁷

Since 2018, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund also donated $580,000 to Education for Just Peace in the Middle East, which, according to the Washington Free Beacon, has been accused of using its charity status to donate to terror group Hamas as well as similar Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO)-linked organizations. ⁴ The Rockefeller Brothers Fund has also donated $490,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace since 2019, an advocacy group that claimed the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 was due to “75 years of Israeli occupation and apartheid.”  ^{18 4} The advocacy group arranged a protest on October 18, 2023 in which the Cannon Congressional Office Building in Washinton D.C was filled by a group of several hundred pro-Palestinian demonstrators demanding a cease-fire in the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas and led to the arrest of over 300 protesters. ¹⁷ A trustee for the Fund, Peter Beinart, voiced his support for the protest and the organization, claiming on X (formerly Twitter), “They just believe that Jewish safety depends on Palestinians being safe too.” ⁴ Roughly $2.2 million has been donated by the Fund towards several other organizations that have either justifying Hamas or blaming Israel for the terrorist attacks. ¹⁷

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund awarded $50,000 grants to 7amleh-Arab Center for the Advancement of Social Media, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Adalah-The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights In Israel; a $100,000 grant to Breaking the Silence, an Israel human rights group made up of ex-Israeli soldiers who allege the Israeli Defense Forces deliberately killed Palestinian civilians; $50,000 to the Common Defense Education Fund for anti-Israel activism; $75,000 for Education for Just Peace in the Middle East which is the parent organization of the US Campaign for Palestinian Rights; $60,000 to the Foundation for Middle East Peace, an anti-Israel group that has given grants to groups that support the BDS campaign against Israel; $75,000 to Grassroots Jerusalem, a Palestinian group operating in Jerusalem; $200,000 to the Middle East Policy Network, a Palestinian advocacy group; $68,500 to the New Israel Fund, a left-of-center grant maker; $74,823 to 972-Advancement of Citizen Journalism which is a joint Israeli-Palestinian independent media outlet; $30,000 to Nonviolence International for its project Center for Jewish Nonviolence; $60,000 to Playgrounds for Palestine; $45,000 to Israeli Democratic Bloc Ltd; and $100,000 to the Project on Middle East Democracy. ¹²

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $100,000 to the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft, a non-interventionist foreign policy think tank. ¹² Rockefeller Brothers Fund president Stephen Heintz also sits as chairman of the board of directors at the Quincy Institute. ¹⁹ The right-leaning Washington Free Beacon reported that the Quincy Institute has ties to the pro-Islamic Republic of Iran lobbying group National Iranian American Council (NIAC) through its former president Trita Parsi, who works as the Quincy Institute’s executive vice president and is backed by Francis Najafi, who is a donor to both groups and to numerous anti-Israel groups. ²⁰

In 2025, the Washington Free Beacon reported that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund had awarded several grants to organizations described by the outlet as having ties to anti-Israel activism and, in some cases, to individuals or groups designated by Israel or the U.S. government for links to terrorism. According to the report, RBF’s 2025 grantees included 7amleh, The Arab Center for Social Media Advancement, Project South, Choose Love, Adalah, The Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel, and the Foundation for Middle East Peace. ²¹

In 2019, Rockefeller Brothers Fund made $150,000 in grants to the Center for Tech and Civic Life (CTCL), a voter mobilization group critics claim disproportionately supports left-of-center candidates. ²²

Between 2016 and 2021, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $500,000 in grants to the Voter Registration Project, which has been accused of launching voter registration drives intended to help the Democratic Party. The Voter Participation Center in 2020 coordinated with Democratic consultants to launch a campaign to selectively register “non-white” voters in swing states to help Democrats win the 2020 presidential election. According to an August 2023 report by the Capital Research Center, which publishes the InfluenceWatch website, the Voter Participation Center’s “Everybody Votes” campaign is estimated to have secured President Joe Biden 1 million to 2.7 million new votes across eight swing states in 2020. If the state-by-state estimated vote total projections made by the Democratic-aligned consultants held true, Joe Biden would have received more VRP-assisted votes than his victory margins in Arizona, Georgia, Nevada, and Pennsylvania. ²³

In January 2024, Capital Research Center president Scott Walter testified to the Georgia Senate Ethics Committee that the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave to FairVote, which campaigns to replace the “first past the post” voting system with ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to rank their choices of candidates and then uses a series of eliminations and reallocations to determine the winner of an election. ²⁴ In 2023, Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $100,000 to FairVote. ¹²

Other Grantmaking

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $1,162,320 to the New Venture Fund, which is a part of the “dark money” network of left-leaning nonprofits administered by the for-profit Arabella Advisors. ¹²

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $82,500 to the population control group Population Council. The group advocates for artificial birth control and abortion in underdeveloped countries. ¹²

In 2023, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave $2,060,000 to Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors to support various projects related to the environment and civic engagement. ¹²

In June 2024, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund announced the investment of $10 million annually in support of a philanthropic initiative it launched to address what it called America’s crisis of polarization within communities. The Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors-sponsored initiative, called the Trust for Civic Life, grew out of a 2020 report by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences which included a series of recommendations on how to inspire a fresh commitment to democratic citizenship. The first set of grants focused on small towns and rural areas. The co-sponsors of the project were Stand Together and the Omidyar Network. ²⁵

Alleged CCP-affiliated Funding

On October 28, 2025, Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-IA) sent letters to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund, the Gates Foundation, and the Ford Foundation requesting to know how they were complying with national tax laws amid allegations that all three had previously provided funding to organizations and other entities with reported connections to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and affiliates. Each letter argued that “to maintain tax exempt status, an organization’s activities must be charitable in nature and may not directly support or promote the interests of a foreign government…I am writing today to ask you whether these reports are true or not and, if true, how your organization’s conduct comports with 501(c)(3) requirements.” ²⁶ According to the news release from Sen. Grassley’s office, between April 2020 and August 2024, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund had reportedly donated over $7.4 million to CCP-connected entities such as the Society of Entrepreneurs of Ecology Foundation which assisted in the “Belt and Road Initiative.” ²⁶

Financials

According to the Rockefeller Brothers Fund’s 2023 tax returns, the group reported $88,417,302 in revenue, $88,775,875 in expenses, and $1,365,026,172 in assets. ¹²

According to its 2021 tax returns, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund reported $94,665,303 in revenue, $90,363,116 in expenses, and $1,654,004,790 in total assets. ²⁷

Leadership

Stephen B. Heintz is the president and CEO of the Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Prior to joining the Fund in 2021, Heintz was the co-founder and president of Demos and was listed as the co-chair of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ (AAAS) National Commission on the Practice of Democratic Citizenship in the 21st Century. Beforehand, he was the chief operating officer (COO) of the EastWest Institute. As of 2026, he is an AAAS fellow, the board chair for the Quincy Institute, a board member for the International Crisis Group and the Rockefeller Archive Center, and is a member of both the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and the China Council for International Cooperation on Environment and Development. ²⁸

Jeremy Ben-Ami is a trustee for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and serves as president of J Street. He previously worked as the deputy domestic policy advisor in the White House during the Clinton Administration. ^{29 30}