George Soros’ Open Society Foundations pledged $300 million toward initiatives it says will defend democratic rights and advance economic security in the U.S. over the next five years, as political pressure on the Soros family and on nonprofits intensifies. The announcement came Wednesday, with Open Society officials describing a strategy that connects rights protections with working-class economic issues.
Laleh Ispahani, managing director for the U.S. at Open Society Foundations, said the foundation will not slow its work in response to attacks that have targeted the Soros family. Speaking when asked about those attacks, Ispahani said: “We are continuing our work unabated. We will not be intimidated into silence.”
The foundation’s new approach, according to Open Society, aims to deepen civil-rights protections while also improving economic well-being. Ispahani said rights and economic security are too often treated separately and that the foundation is seeking to address them together. Open Society Foundations also said it would look for state-level policies that strengthen protections for vulnerable groups and for policies intended to create a fair economy for the working class.
In explaining the economic side of the strategy, Ispahani pointed to core working-class needs, arguing that addressing the racial wealth gap requires tackling issues such as living wages, affordable child care and housing. She also said Open Society has already committed part of the pledge to current-year work focused on defending rights and the rule of law.
Open Society said it has committed $20 million of the $300 million to be used this year for organizations working to defend rights and the rule of law through strategic litigation, nonprofit sector defense, and efforts to track government corruption in the U.S. The foundation said its new democracy strategy is also the first new program dedicated solely to the U.S. that it has approved under the leadership of Alex Soros, one of George Soros’ sons, who has overseen a restructuring of the foundations and major layoffs.
In a statement, Alex Soros said guaranteed rights and freedoms are a key part of defending against what he described as a “closed society,” and he tied the new investments to both democracy and economic prosperity. Soros said: “Guaranteed rights and freedoms are just as critical as broad economic prosperity and are the strongest defense we have against a closed society.” He added, “Our new investments will tackle these twin challenges.”
The pledge was announced as the Trump administration and congressional allies have increased scrutiny of nonprofits, including those the administration accuses of promoting ideas it opposes. The Open Society announcement referenced a broader effort launched in 2025 that, according to the report, has sought to influence nonprofits and charitable funders through executive orders, funding restrictions or threatened investigations.
The AP report also said president’s allies in Congress have asked the Internal Revenue Service and the Department of Justice to investigate nonprofits they accuse of supporting domestic terrorism, illegal immigration or climate programs they disagree with. It said that in December, then-Attorney General Pam Bondi ordered law enforcement to investigate nonprofits that support antifa, an umbrella term for far-left-leaning groups that Trump has designated a domestic terrorist organization. When asked whether the Justice Department was looking into Open Society, a DOJ spokesperson said the department does not comment on investigations.
The announcement also included context on how large philanthropic foundations have changed their giving patterns related to democracy. The AP report cited research by Kristin Anne Goss, a professor at Duke University’s Sanford School of Public Policy, which used a dataset of grants from the largest 1,000 philanthropic foundations to find that giving to democracy increased as a share of total giving between 2013 and 2020 among very large foundations. The report also cited research by David Wolcheck, lead data analyst for research at nonprofit Candid, saying foundation support for democracy-related activities tripled between 2016 and 2020 before dropping by a third the following year.
The Open Society pledge comes alongside other democracy-related commitments described in the report. Those include a Ford Foundation statement that it is providing substantial funding to organizations across the political spectrum doing nonpartisan work to safeguard democracy and protect the rule of law, as well as a MacArthur Foundation pledge of $100 million between last year and this year to protect voting rights and civil rights. The report also cited Minnesota-based McKnight Foundation approval of additional spending from its endowment in 2026 for civic-engagement work, and described a campaign known as “All by April” urging philanthropic funders to support free and fair elections and to protect nonprofits and their leaders from government intimidation.
Open Society officials framed the renewed funding as an effort to respond quickly to democratic threats while providing long-term support to nonprofits engaged in civic participation and governance. The report also noted that foundations and researchers say measuring impact in democracy work remains difficult, citing Goss’s view that many democracy-related efforts target deep, long-standing problems and can be rooted in broader economic and political structures.
In the past, Open Society’s U.S. democracy strategy included what the report described as multiracial, multifaith, pro-democracy alliance efforts with five-year grants to community-based groups led by people of color and women. The new strategy seeks to build on those commitments by integrating rights protections and economic security within a single five-year plan.