Overview
JEF says it supports educational programming about the “pressing problems of society and how to effect social change.” Many of its grants fund international programs.
Investigative reporting and congressional inquiries have linked JEF to activist Neville Roy Singham and alleged that the organization is part of a network connected to the Chinese Communist Party through him.
Tax classification — 501(c)(3)
Location — New York, NY
Founded — 2018
Annual revenue — $5,595,805 (FY 2024)
EIN — 82-4975378
Activities
Grantmaking accounted for nearly 80 percent of JEF’s expenses in fiscal year 2024, when it reported more than $8.5 million in grants and similar amounts paid. JEF’s website describes this work as “strategic grant-making,” while its Form 990 says the grants support the “education, training and mobilization of marginalized communities.” JEF has funded foreign entities across five continents.
JEF says its educational activities include seminars, webinars, expert gatherings, multiday training, investigative journalism and “the elevation of voices not commonly featured in mainstream media.” It also says it will fund the creation and operation of “Popular Education Schools” in the Global South and the United States.
Public filings provide limited information about JEF’s overseas grantmaking. Its Schedule F disclosures generally identify recipients’ regions, grant amounts and broad purposes—not their names or the specific programs funded—making it difficult to determine which organizations ultimately received much of JEF’s foreign funding.
Related Organizations and Affiliations
Related Organizations
JEF did not report any related organizations in its most recent 990 filing.However, Schedule R of its 2023 filing identified a real estate company in São Paulo, Brazil, as wholly owned and directly controlled by JEF. The company, BZ Propriedades Culturais Ltda., was “treated as a partnership” that year, according to the filing.
JEF’s 2023 filing also identified two domestic real estate holding companies wholly owned by JEF, Brazil Holdings One LLC and Brazil Holdings Two LLC. Neither company reported income or assets in 2023.
JEF filed Schedule R only in 2023.
Affiliations
JEF is one of the most consequential funding sources in a tight network of nonprofits whose 990 filings between 2018 and 2024 reveal overlapping personnel, mutual financial support and aligned missions. Specifically, JEF has funded The People’s Forum, CODEPINK, the People’s Welfare Association (PWA) and Breakthrough BT Media Inc., which operates as BreakThrough News. Multiple JEF board members have held positions at these organizations.
Two JEF board members, David Chung and Manolo De Los Santos, appeared in The People’s Forum’s most recent 990 filing, which covered 2024. Chung, the JEF chair, is the organizing director at The People’s Forum (TPF). De Los Santos, the JEF board secretary, is The People’s Forum’s founding executive director. Chung and De Los Santos have maintained these affiliations concurrently since 2022.
JEF has also granted $148,730 to The People’s Forum since 2020.
In addition, De Los Santos has written for BreakThrough News. Its nonprofit operator, Breakthrough BT Media Inc., has received more than $2 million from JEF since 2020. In 2023 and 2024, JEF also granted nearly $2 million to Peoples Dispatch, which combined its editorial operations with BreakThrough News in June 2026 to form a single, unified text-and-video outlet.
As of February 2024, BreakThrough News co-founder Eugene Puryear was also the board treasurer of the People’s Welfare Association. From 2019 through 2024, PWA received $66.5 million in grants from the People’s Support Foundation (PSF), which also approved $23.6 million in grants for future payment during that period. PWA also received $17.5 million from JEF. JEF, in turn, received more than $5.3 million from the People’s Support Foundation in 2024.
Further, of the seven people reported as JEF directors in the organization’s fiscal year 2018 through 2024 Form 990 filings, three are affiliated with the think tank Tricontinental: Tings Chak, Maria del Pilar Troya Fernández and De Los Santos.
Chak chaired JEF in 2019 and served on the United Community Fund’s board until Aug. 31 of that year. JEF reported granting the United Community Fund $8.33 million in 2019 and another $170,000 in 2020.
Controversies
Much of the controversy surrounding JEF stems from the organization’s purported connections to Neville Roy Singham, an American businessman and social activist.
In an Aug. 5, 2023, article, The New York Times identified JEF as one of four organizations at the “center” of “a system that concealed [Singham’s] giving.” The article characterized this system as “a tangle of nonprofit groups and shell companies,” and claimed that Singham “[worked] closely with the Chinese government media machine and [financed] its propaganda worldwide.”
Three days after The New York Times published the story, then-Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) wrote to then-Attorney General Merrick Garland that “it appears organizations tied to Neville Roy Singham, a U.S. citizen, have been receiving direction from the CCP,” referring to the Chinese Communist Party. The letter named JEF specifically, alongside eight other organizations. Rubio claimed JEF was part of a “dark money system” created by Singham and asked Garland to investigate its “potential violations of the Foreign Agents Registration Act.”
In September 2025, Rep. James Comer (R-Ky.) and Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.) echoed these concerns in a letter to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. Their letter asked Bessent to investigate 19 entities “alleged to have ties with Mr. Singham,” including JEF, TPF, PSF and Tricontinental.
“I categorically deny and repudiate any suggestion that I am a member of, work for, take orders from, or follow instructions of any political party or government or their representatives,” Singham told The New York Times in an email. Instead, Singham wrote, “I am solely guided by my beliefs, which are my long-held personal views.”
Separately, in a 2023 statement published by People’s Democracy, the weekly newspaper of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), PSF treasurer Jason Pfetcher described Singham’s financial role in the foundation, which later funded JEF. Pfetcher said he joined Singham to “assist him in his efforts to give away most of the proceeds” from the sale of ThoughtWorks and that “all funds donated to PSF came from the sale.” PSF’s tax filings independently document its grants to JEF. Taken together, Pfetcher’s statement and the filings indicate that Singham’s ThoughtWorks proceeds helped capitalize a foundation that later funded JEF.
JEF’s own filings also document a substantial relationship with a Shanghai media company. Since 2021, JEF has reported paying nearly $6.6 million to Shanghai Maku Cultural Communications Co., which operates publicly as the Maku Group, for the “production of [an] online news program.” This spending accounts for more than 11.2 percent of JEF’s total expenses over that period. The New York Times also reported that Singham shared an office in Shanghai Times Square with Maku, that his groups shared staff members with the company and that Maku’s website identified “tell China’s story well” as the company’s goal. The phrase “tell the story of China well” became an explicit directive under Xi Jinping at an August 2013 national conference on publicity and ideological work. Xi paired it with calls to strengthen international communications and develop new methods of external publicity.
Finances
Since its formation, JEF has reported more than $57.1 million in grants and similar amounts paid. In fiscal year 2024 alone, it reported more than $8.5 million in grants, including more than $4 million to recipients outside the United States.
JEF reported nearly $5.6 million in revenue and more than $10.7 million in expenses in fiscal year 2024, producing a deficit of more than $5.1 million. At year-end, it held $278,725 in assets and approximately $1.1 million in liabilities, leaving it with negative net assets of $827,340. That marked a sharp reversal from fiscal year 2022, when JEF reported nearly $20.7 million in revenue and net assets of more than $8.3 million.
Contributions have accounted for virtually all of JEF’s revenue. Between 2018 and 2023, approximately $68.8 million—87.7 percent of its contributed revenue—came through a Goldman Sachs donor-advised fund. Because donor-advised fund distributions generally identify the sponsoring organization rather than the original donor, the filings do not disclose who supplied the underlying money.
JEF’s largest identified domestic grantees have included the People’s Welfare Association, Breakthrough BT Media Inc. and Peoples Dispatch. Since 2020, JEF has reported granting more than $16.6 million to PWA, more than $2 million to Breakthrough BT Media Inc. and nearly $2 million to Peoples Dispatch. Its foreign-grant disclosures generally identify geographic regions, grant amounts and broad purposes rather than recipients’ names.
Compensation
JEF had 10 employees in 2024 and paid them a total of $828,444 in compensation and benefits.
Board of Directors
David “Sung Mo” Chung, chair
Manolo De Los Santos, secretary
Karina Garcia, treasurer
Maria del Pilar Troya Fernández
Karina Garcia, JEF’s board treasurer since 2023, was the 2024 candidate for U.S. vice president on the Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket.
Revenue and expenses
Assets and liabilities
Founded in 2026, the Civil Defense Institute is a nonpartisan investigative research organization. We research people, organizations and networks whose conduct undermines civil society and Americans’ freedom to participate in public life. Our work examines extremist and conspiracy-driven campaigns, foreign influence, organized harassment and the institutions that enable them.