WhoFundsWho – WhoFundsWho instantly shows you who funds the experts, politicians, think tanks and other institutions you are reading about

WhoFundsWho is a browser extension that instantly shows you who funds the experts, politicians, think tanks and other organizations that you are reading about.

There is an old joke about making politicians wear their sponsors’ logos on their suits, like NASCAR drivers do. That way we would instantly know which special interests may be benefiting from the policies advocated by a politician. The same goes for the experts that appear in the media to explain foreign policy, public health, the economy and so on to the public. For example, if a foreign policy expert argues that instead of facilitating peace negotiations we should send more weapons to a conflict zone it may well be relevant to know that the think tank she works for is funded by defense contractors.

Although you can typically find this kind of sponsorship information if you do some investigating online, as a reader you don’t want to have to do the research for every person and organization that you’d like to know more about. That’s why it would be so helpful if the experts and politicians wore sponsor logos on their suits. But that’s obviously not going to happen.

Well, WhoFundsWho does the next best thing.

We did the research for you and compiled a database with funding information for tens of thousands of experts, politicians and organizations. Next we created a browser extension that automatically presents this information to you exactly when it is most relevant to you, i.e. when you are reading about them.

Here’s how it works: When you open a webpage to read an article or browse a news site, in the background WhoFundsWho checks whether any of the names in the database are on the webpage. If so, it highlights those names to draw your attention. When you then click on or hover over the highlighted name, a popup appears that tells you who is funding that person or organization.

And it is not just financial information that WhoFundsWho can provide you with. It can also tell you:

• what other organizations a person has worked for
• how an organization is related to other organizations
• who their parent or child organizations are
• who they partner with
• what networks they are a member of
• and more 

For example, you can ask WhoFundsWho to highlight the names of every person and politician that has some kind of formal affiliation with the World Economic Forum. Here’s what that looks like when you then visit a page that lists the members of the current Canadian government:

How to Use

In the user menu there are several options you can choose from:

on / off – Use this to turn the extension on or off. The default is ‘on’.
click / hover – By default the popup will open when you hover over a highlighted name but you can also choose ‘click’ which opens the popup when you click on the highlighted name. The potential issue with the ‘click’ option is that sometimes the names that the extension finds and highlights on the webpage were already hyperlinked on the original page. And the hyperlink applied by the extension may then override the original hyperlink so that the original link is no longer accessible. This conflict is avoided by choosing ‘hover’ to open the popup which leaves the webpage’s original click action intact.
quick / full – The ‘quick’ option loads the popup with only the most important information, in text format, while the default ‘full’ shows all available information, and it uses both text and images.
first / all – When the default ‘all’ is selected, all instances of each matching name found on the webpage will be highlighted whereas ‘first’ will highlight + hyperlink only the first two instances. The reason for this option is that if the name of an organization or person is frequently mentioned on a webpage then it may become distracting or visually unappealing if each instance of that name is highlighted + hyperlinked. Note that on twitter.com the option to highlight only the first 2 instances is not available and all instances will be highlighted.

include people – The database contains records for both organizations and people. The extension will always highlight the names of matching organizations but by checking or unchecking ‘include people’ you can choose whether you also want it to find matching people.

category checkboxes – You can choose one or more of up to 11 different categories of organizations & people. If for example you are only interested in information about think tanks, then check that option. If you want the extension to alert you whenever the organizations or people you are reading about are funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation or have some affiliation with the World Economic Forum, then check those options.

all websites / select – By default the extension runs on all webpages but you can also specify the websites that you want the extension to run, or not run, on. Click the ‘select’ link to open the form where you can specify the specific URLs, check the ‘select’ radio button, and then decide whether the extension should or should not run on the websites you specified.

highlight & text – Select the highlight and text color the extension uses.

Note that changes that you make in the menu won’t become active until you refresh the page or open a new page, tab or window.

As for the popups that open on the webpage, you can:

• resize it
• drag it
• export the contents as a .csv file
• return to the top after having scrolled down

For more information, see the FAQ.

Troubleshooting? Click here.

Why WhoFundsWho?

Although the WhoFundsWho database is only in its early stages, it already contains information about many tens of thousands of organizations and people. But it is by no means complete or exhaustive. Think of the database as Wikipedia in its early years: Already useful but with tremendous potential for further growth.

Our goal is for WhoFundsWho to become an indispensable tool that reveals to users the otherwise hidden connections that exist between the organizations and people that shape public opinion and policy.

And you can help make this happen:

• by sending comments, suggestions, questions, criticisms and other kinds of feedback
• by correcting any errors you may come across in the data the extension presents to you
• by sending us new information or sources about funding and other types of connections that we can add to the database
• by evaluating or contributing to the code

To get in touch, you can fill out the contact form to get in touch, send us an email at support@whofundswho.com or follow us on Twitter: @whofundswho.

You can also help by spreading the word and telling others about WhoFundsWho.

Lastly, although we try to automate as much as possible it is still true that many hundreds of hours go into doing the research, homogenizing and processing the data, building the database, and designing, testing and improving the extension.

If you find that WhoFundsWho provides a valuable service to you, please consider making a donation to support our work and help us sustain, improve and expand the project.