A vast network of anti-Israel groups has found "alternative fiscal sponsorships" after a main backer, the Westchester People's Action Coalition (WESPAC), was exposed in a number of lawsuits as the financial powerhouse underwriting the nationwide campus protest movement, a new watchdog report shows.
WESPAC, a nonprofit headquartered in the affluent New York suburb White Plains, served until recently as the official "fiscal sponsor" for many of the organizations orchestrating violent and often anti-Semitic demonstrations on college campuses across the country. With WESPAC now embroiled in nationwide lawsuits, its partner organizations have been forced to find new benefactors and alternate fundraising channels.
WESPAC's financial relationships with numerous pro-terror groups allowed it to accept tax-deductible donations on behalf of many organizations "directly responsible for targeting Jews with antisemitic rhetoric and creating a hostile environment across the United States," according to a new report by NGO Monitor, which tracks anti-Israel funding networks. Those organizations include National Students for Justice in Palestine, Within Our Lifetime, the Palestinian Youth Movement, the U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network, the Palestinian Feminist Collective, and Adalah-NY.
WESPAC's support for these groups landed it in hot water, with the organization finding itself in congressional crosshairs over its funding of activists who vandalized Washington, D.C., landmarks when Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to Congress in July 2024. It has also been on the receiving end of a torrent of lawsuits over its support for the pro-Hamas contingent in the United States over the past year. One such lawsuit came from survivors of Hamas's Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and families of the terror group's victims who alleged that WESPAC affiliates function as "collaborators and propagandists for Hamas."
In recent months, "almost all the NGOs" once backed by the charity "have secured alternative fiscal sponsorships," the report states. NGO Monitor's findings suggest that, even with increased scrutiny, the organizations driving the anti-Israel movement on campus continue to enjoy a privileged tax status and access to cash.
WESPAC itself admitted in a January 2025 funding email that it is facing "dire fiscal trouble" as a result of what it characterized as "the well-funded forces of darkness" waging "legal warfare." It asked supporters for $90,000 in funds to "protect WESPAC from the precipice," noting that the threat to its "survival is real." Amid these struggles, WESPAC's multiple "fiscal sponsorships have apparently been dissolved, with NGOs switching to new fiscal arrangements."
The Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM)—which the Israeli government says maintains "close ties" with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine terror group—directed its donations through WESPAC until May 2024, when both groups were named in a lawsuit for blockading Washington, D.C., traffic during an anti-Israel demonstration. By June, PYM "began soliciting donations via Honor the Earth, an 'Indigenous-led organization fighting to dismantle settler-colonialism, racial capitalism, white supremacy, and imperialism,'" according to NGO Monitor.
PYM organizer Nadya Tannous serves as Honor the Earth's deputy director, while one of its board members, Lenna Zahran Nasr, is a lead organizer for PYM. Like WESPAC and other nonprofits bankrolling the anti-Israel movement, "Honor the Earth does not provide details on the donors and amounts disbursed for PYM activities."
The U.S. Palestinian Community Network (USPCN), which described Hamas's Oct. 7 terror spree as "self defense," directed its supporters to WESPAC until June 2024, saying that donations were "tax-deductible" under its financial arrangement. Later that year, USPCN "moved its online donation platform to Venmo, and by April 2025, USPCN began soliciting funds through the fundraising platform Zeffy," the report found.
The Palestinian Feminist Collective, meanwhile, adopted a new fiscal sponsor in April 2025. It ditched WESPAC for Al-Awda, the Palestine Right to Return Coalition (PRRC), an extremist anti-Israel group.
As lawsuits in California, Chicago, D.C., New York, and Virginia push WESPAC ever closer to financial ruin, its books are still kept behind closed doors. The charity took in $2.4 million in fiscal year 2022–2023, with around $1.8 million in expenses.
"WESPAC's sources of income are mostly unknown," according to NGO Monitor. "Public records reveal a handful of foundational donors, including from large donor-advised charities that further obscure the origins of the funds."
Financial support from more mainstream progressive foundations has helped legitimize WESPAC's operations, regardless of potential concerns that the cash goes to groups that support terrorist organizations.
WESPAC took in more than $110,000 from the Elias Foundation between 2020 and 2023, according to NGO Monitor's findings. Morgan Stanley Global Impact donated $50,000 in 2020 and 2021. Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors provided $230,000 from 2021 to 2023, while the Tides Center and Tides Foundation each provided $35,000 and $90,000, respectively, in 2022.