While the Big Five gun control groups dominate nonprofit activism in the United States, many other organizations are also active. Notable among these are Guns Down America, the Alliance for Gun Responsibility, the Violence Policy Center, and The Trace. Additionally, the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Violence Solutions operates within Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health. Some larger public policy advocacy groups like the Center for American Progress also include gun control as one of their focus areas.
The role of charitable money is significant in this sector, even on an issue as political as gun control. This trend is seen across American public policy advocacy, particularly on the left. The charitable sector can be surprisingly political.
The Big Five gun control groups highlight the importance of donor-advised funds to charities. Many major grantmakers fund these groups’ 501(c)(3) arms and are some of the largest donor-advised fund providers in the country: Fidelity Investments Charitable Gift Fund, Donor Advised Charitable Giving (formerly Schwab Charitable Fund), Vanguard Charitable Endowment Program, among others. Due to how donor-advised funds operate, it is unclear if a reported grant comes from one or multiple individual donors.
