-
Non-profit
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) is a Cambridge, Massachusetts-based activist group that uses science policy and climate change to advocate for left-of-center policies. As an activist organization, UCS began in the late 1960s with opposition to the Vietnam War and U.S. nuclear weapons testing, later coming to oppose peaceful
-
Non-profit
Founded by left-wing activist and former Presidential candidate Ralph Nader, the U.S. Public Interest Research Group is a 501(c)(4) organization that oversees a federation of state progressive advocacy groups also known as “PIRGs.” As the national organization for these independent state-based PIRGs, U.S. PIRG coordinates resources among its 47
-
Non-profit
The New Venture Fund (NVF) is a 501(c)(3) funding and fiscal sponsorship nonprofit that makes grants to left-of-center advocacy and organizing projects and provides incubation serves for other left-of-center organizations. The fund focuses primarily on social and environmental change, issuing grants for a variety of projects that include conservation, global
-
Non-profit
Founded in 1909, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is the nation’s oldest civil rights organization. Over its 100+ year history The NAACP has grown exponentially to what is now a network of more than 2,200 affiliates covering all 50 states, the District of Columbia, Japan
-
Non-profit
Justice at Stake was an advocacy group promoting restrictions on judicial selection for state courts. The organization supported indirect selection of state judges by panels stacked by state bar associations and opposes judicial elections and federal-style judicial appointment processes.
-
Labor Union
The International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT), commonly shortened to Teamsters, is one of the nation’s largest private-sector labor unions. Principally representing employees in the trucking, railway, and airline industries, the Teamsters union has over 1.2 million members.
-
Person
Gara LaMarche is the former president of the Democracy Alliance, a network of left-of-center donors for coordinated giving founded in 2005.
-
Non-profit
Earthjustice (formerly the Sierra Club Legal Defense Fund) is a public interest law firm that litigates cases related to left-leaning climate and energy policy, often on behalf of left-leaning climate policy organizations such as Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, the Center for Biological Diversity, the
-
Non-profit
Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington (CREW) is a legal advocacy group with previous connections with political strategist David Brock. The organization describes itself as a “nonpartisan” watchdog group directing litigation against government corruption in an effort to advance the public interest. The group is part of Brock’s
-
For-profit
The Analyst Institute works with left-of-center organizations and campaigns across the U.S. to help them measure the impact of their programs and increase their reach. The Institute has run experimental tests for hundreds of such groups.
-
Person
Albert Arnold “Al” Gore Jr. is a Democratic Party politician and environmentalist activist. He has served as a U.S. Representative, United States Senator from Tennessee, and the 45th Vice President of the United States. He was the Democratic Party presidential nominee in the 2000 Presidential election, which he lost to
-
Person
Thomas Fahr “Tom” Steyer is an American hedge-fund billionaire turned climate-change activist, and major political donor to environmental causes and Democrats advocating an environmentalist agenda to fight global warming. Steyer made his fortune as the co-founder and senior managing partner of Farallon Capital Management, a hedge fund worth $30 billion.
-
Non-profit
Also see Tides Nexus The Tides Foundation is a major center-left grantmaking organization and a major pass-through funder to numerous left-leaning nonprofits. The San Francisco, California-based 501(c)(3) nonprofit was founded in 1976 by Drummond Pike, a professional political activist who has since retired from the organization, to funnel
-
Labor Union
The Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is one of America’s largest, most controversial, and most politically involved labor unions. The SEIU, which represents building services employees, nurses, other healthcare workers, and public employees, is noted for its close ties to the broader left-of-center movement, perhaps most notably the controversial now-defunct
-
Non-profit
The Center for American Progress (CAP) is a liberal Washington, D.C.-based think tank with strong ties to the Democratic Party establishment created in 2003 as the left-of-center alternative to the right-leaning Heritage Foundation. Since its founding, the organization has exerted significant influence within the American political left. The organization
