Genesis Prize laureate's foundation gave $597K to dark money conduits, anti-Israel advocacy groups, the Iran deal echo chamber, and a movement that accused Israel of genocide.
Barbra Streisand's foundation gave $597,000 between 2020 and 2024 to eight organizations, including Arabella Advisors-managed dark money funds, the Tides Foundation, J Street, the New Israel Fund, the Quincy Institute, Media Matters, the Ploughshares Fund, and the Movement for Black Lives. Barbra Streisand has been the foundation's sole president since 1986, and every grant is made by invitation only.
What Is the Streisand Foundation and Who Controls Its Grants?
The Streisand Foundation is Barbra Streisand's private foundation (EIN 13-2620702), based in Woodland Hills, California, holding $30.5 million in total assets as of its FY2024 Form 990-PF filing. Streisand has served as president since 1986 and holds sole final authority over every grant. Margery Tabankin has served as treasurer and secretary since 1986; Francis Smith has been executive director since 2013 and also advises the Democracy Alliance, the progressive donor network co-founded by George Soros. The foundation has no independent directors, no outside advisory board, and no published grantmaking criteria beyond "by invitation only."
In the past five years, the foundation distributed $5.5 million across 403 grants to 222 organizations. Over its lifetime it has given more than $25 million to over 800 nonprofits. All figures in this article come from the foundation's IRS Form 990-PF filings, available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer and Grantmakers.io.
Who are the key people behind the foundation's grants?
- Barbra Streisand, President (1986-present): sole final authority on all grantmaking.
- Margery Tabankin, Treasurer/Secretary (1986-present): a progressive political strategist trained at Saul Alinsky's Industrial Areas Foundation, former VISTA National Director under President Carter, and former head of the Hollywood Women's Political Committee.
- Francis Smith, Executive Director (2013-present): also a political advisor to the Democracy Alliance.
- Jason Gould, Board Member: Streisand's son.
- Lester J. Knispel, Assistant Secretary.
How Much Did Streisand Give to the Arabella Advisors Network?
The Streisand Foundation gave $195,000 to two entities managed by Arabella Advisors: $160,000 across five grants to the New Venture Fund (2020-2024) and $35,000 across two grants to the Hopewell Fund (2021-2022). Arabella Advisors is a Washington, D.C. consultancy that manages the New Venture Fund, Hopewell Fund, Sixteen Thirty Fund, Windward Fund, and North Fund, entities that together have moved billions of dollars through progressive political causes. New Venture Fund alone reported $669 million in revenue in 2023.
The New York Times described the Arabella network in 2021 as a leading vehicle for dark money on the American left, criticizing a structure that obscures the identities of donors. The District of Columbia attorney general opened an investigation into Arabella in 2023 after reports that the New Venture Fund used charitable donations to push expanded mail-in voting; a whistleblower alleged that timesheets were altered to conceal that a 501(c)(3) was engaging in political activity. Americans for Public Trust filed an IRS complaint in August 2023 noting that the New Venture Fund told the IRS in 2006 that Arabella's management was "anticipated to be temporary," an arrangement still in place two decades later.
Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a non-U.S. citizen, moved $475 million into American organizations through the Arabella network, exploiting a loophole that allows foreign nationals to fund nonprofits even though they cannot legally contribute to candidates, parties, or PACs. The Capital Research Center traced $265 million of Wyss's money directly to Arabella entities. Francis Smith, the Streisand Foundation's executive director, advises the Democracy Alliance, the same donor coordination network that channels funding through Arabella's entities, connecting the foundation to the network structurally as well as financially.
Why Did Israel's Ambassador Call J Street "a Cancer"?
The Streisand Foundation gave J Street's Education Fund $55,000 across three grants between 2022 and 2024. On May 19, 2026, Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, called J Street "a cancer within the Jewish community" at a National Task Force to Combat Antisemitism gathering at the Museum of the Bible in Washington, asking how an organization could call itself pro-Israel while advocating an arms embargo on a state fighting a seven-front war against Iranian proxies.
J Street published a policy memo in April 2026 calling for a "responsible and relatively rapid phase-out of all financial assistance" to Israel, including ballistic missile defense funding. The memo calls for ending $3.3 billion in annual Foreign Military Financing and $500 million in Department of Defense missile defense funding when the current $38 billion memorandum of understanding expires in 2028, funding that supports Iron Dome, David's Sling, and Arrow, the systems that intercepted more than 300 Iranian missiles and drones on April 13, 2024. J Street now endorses more members of Congress than AIPAC among Democrats, and in April 2026, a record 27 Senate Democrats voted to restrict $660 million in weapons sales to Israel at J Street's urging.
Why Is Congress Investigating the New Israel Fund Streisand Funds?
The Streisand Foundation gave the New Israel Fund $20,000 across two grants in 2023 and 2024. On July 9, 2026, the House Judiciary and Ways and Means committees opened a formal investigation into the New Israel Fund. House Judiciary Chairman Jim Jordan and Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith allege the organization violated its 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by funding groups that engaged in political campaign activity during Israel's 2019 elections, activity federal law "absolutely prohibits" for charities.
The committees cited two specific grants: $356,000 from the New Israel Fund to Zazim, which bussed Bedouin voters to the polls as part of the opposition to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and $95,000 to Adalah, which provided legal representation to the Joint Arab List, the alliance of Arab parties that centered their 2019 campaign on ousting Netanyahu in favor of Benny Gantz. According to NGO Monitor, the New Israel Fund has donated more than $300 million to Israeli nonprofits since 1979, including Breaking the Silence, which has received more than $700,000 and dispatches former Israeli soldiers on international tours accusing the IDF of war crimes. Birthright Israel has banned the New Israel Fund from its programming.
What Does Streisand's Money to the Tides Foundation Actually Fund?
The Streisand Foundation gave the Tides Foundation $139,000 across five grants between 2020 and 2024. The Tides Network has moved more than $3 billion since 1976 and manages nearly 400 donor-advised funds, operating as a fiscal sponsor that lets donors give anonymously while Tides distributes the money onward. According to NGO Monitor, Tides serves as fiscal sponsor and grant channel for several of the most active anti-Israel organizations in the United States.
Tides-channeled funding includes $312,000 to Jewish Voice for Peace, the largest Jewish BDS organization in the U.S., which describes Israel as an "apartheid state"; $358,000 to IfNotNow, which campaigns to end American Jewish support for Israel's "occupation"; $293,000 to CODEPINK, which has organized protests and disrupted congressional hearings on Israel; $3.5 million to the Alliance for Global Justice, fiscal sponsor of Samidoun, an organization the United States and Canada have designated a terrorist entity for its ties to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine; and $173,000 to the Center for Constitutional Rights, which filed a federal lawsuit accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
Why Does Streisand's Quincy Institute Grant Matter for Israel?
The Streisand Foundation gave the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft $70,000 across three grants between 2021 and 2024. Quincy was founded in 2019 with $500,000 in seed funding from George Soros's Open Society Foundations and $500,000 from the Charles Koch Foundation. Led by Trita Parsi, formerly president of the National Iranian American Council, Quincy advocates reduced U.S. military engagement in the Middle East and conditioning military aid to Israel under a policy it calls "military restraint."
Why Did Streisand Fund Media Matters After Its "Israel Firster" Row?
The Streisand Foundation gave Media Matters for America $74,000 across four grants between 2020 and 2024. Media Matters was founded in 2004 by David Brock, incubated inside John Podesta's Center for American Progress as a rapid-response operation against conservative media; it reported $21.9 million in revenue in 2024.
In 2012, Media Matters drew criticism from Jewish organizations after its senior foreign policy fellow, M.J. Rosenberg, repeatedly used the term "Israel firster," language implying that American supporters of Israel hold dual loyalties. Fox News reported that both Media Matters and the Center for American Progress faced condemnation over writers who downplayed the threat of a nuclear Iran and criticized American supporters of Israel. The Simon Wiesenthal Center said the organizations were trying to make it "difficult for others to take a position sympathetic to the Jewish state." Brock declined to distance the organization from Rosenberg's language when asked directly.
How Does Streisand's Ploughshares Grant Tie to the Iran Deal?
The Streisand Foundation gave the Ploughshares Fund $32,000 across four grants between 2020 and 2023. Ploughshares is a nuclear disarmament grant-maker that became the financial backbone of the Obama administration's campaign to build public support for the Iran nuclear deal, what senior White House adviser Ben Rhodes called an "echo chamber" of nongovernmental organizations, experts, and sympathetic journalists in a 2016 New York Times Magazine profile.
Ploughshares gave $100,000 to NPR for coverage of the nuclear deal while its president, Joseph Cirincione, appeared on NPR as an on-air expert; NPR disclosed the funding relationship in one appearance and not in another, according to reporting cited by InfluenceWatch. Ploughshares also gave $576,000 to J Street, $282,500 to the Arms Control Association, $225,000 to the Brookings Institution, and $182,500 to the Atlantic Council for Iran-related advocacy, and the Washington Free Beacon reported it sought $750,000 from Soros's Open Society Foundations specifically to fund "experts and validators" supporting the administration's Iran diplomacy. The deal unfroze tens of billions of dollars for the Iranian regime, funding that has supported Hezbollah, Hamas, the Houthis, and IRGC operations across the Middle East.
Did the Movement for Black Lives Retract Its Genocide Claim?
The Streisand Foundation gave the Movement for Black Lives $12,000 in 2020. In August 2016, the coalition of more than 50 Black-led organizations released a policy platform labeling Israel an "apartheid state" and accusing the United States of complicity in "genocide taking place against the Palestinian people," while endorsing the BDS campaign. According to NGO Monitor, Adalah, a New Israel Fund grantee, helped draft the platform's anti-Israel sections; Adalah Justice Project director Nadia Ben-Youssef was originally listed as a co-author before her name was removed and Adalah credited as a "contributing organization" instead.
The Anti-Defamation League, the Reform movement, the National Council of Jewish Women, and the Rabbinical Assembly condemned the platform, with the Rabbinical Assembly calling itself "stunned and outraged by the erroneous and egregious claims of genocide and apartheid." Even T'ruah, a liberal rabbis' human rights group that opposes Israel's West Bank occupation, criticized the document. The Movement for Black Lives has not retracted the genocide accusation.
What Did the Genesis Prize Overlook When It Honored Barbra Streisand?
In June 2024, the Genesis Prize Foundation named Streisand its 10th anniversary laureate, an honor the foundation calls the "Jewish Nobel," selected after nominations from tens of thousands of Jews worldwide; previous laureates include Michael Bloomberg, Natalie Portman, and Michael Douglas. Streisand is Jewish, Brooklyn-born, the daughter of a Jewish schoolteacher, and among the most publicly identified Jews in American life. Her foundation's grants, made by invitation only and approved solely by Streisand as president, went to organizations that Israel's own ambassador, a congressional investigation, and a coalition of mainstream Jewish organizations have separately criticized or condemned. No independent director reviewed any of the eight grants detailed here, and the foundation discloses no grantmaking criteria beyond its own IRS filings.
Sources
All grant amounts are drawn from the Streisand Foundation's IRS Form 990-PF filings (EIN 13-2620702), available through ProPublica's Nonprofit Explorer, Grantmakers.io, and philanthropy.org's grant database. Tides and New Israel Fund grantee data come from NGO Monitor's Tides Network profile and NGO Monitor's New Israel Fund profile. Ambassador Leiter's remarks were reported by JNS. J Street's policy memo is published at jstreet.org. The congressional probe of the New Israel Fund was reported by JNS. The Arabella Advisors network is documented by InfluenceWatch, the Capital Research Center, and reporting on the New Venture Fund. The Ploughshares Fund's role in the Iran deal is documented by InfluenceWatch and the 2016 New York Times Magazine profile of Ben Rhodes. The Media Matters "Israel firster" controversy was reported by the Washington Free Beacon and Fox News. The Movement for Black Lives platform is documented by the Times of Israel, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, and NGO Monitor. Biographical background on Barbra Streisand is drawn from her Wikipedia entry.
