# Foundation Funding

> Foundation Funding is mapped as the amplifier: it converts wealth, access, expertise, or organization into political voice.

| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Stable ID | `node:kiduna:political-change:money-influence:foundation-funding` |
| Family | Money & Influence |
| Domain | Political Economy |
| Kind | mechanism |
| Archetypal function | The Amplifier |
| Epistemic status | synthesis; supported |

## Concrete anchor

Foundation Funding belongs to the **Money & Influence** family. It is treated as a specific political object, role, institution, tactic, event, ideology, or mechanism before any symbolic transfer is made.

## What it does

Foundation Funding converts wealth, access, expertise, or organization into political voice, changing who can act, what becomes visible, and which costs are distributed to others.

## Who gains and who loses power

The mechanism can increase the capacity of actors able to use Foundation Funding, while shifting cost, delay, risk, exclusion, or dependence toward actors with less authority, information, organization, money, or safe access. The distribution is conditional, not an essence of the node.

## Archetypal function

**The Amplifier.** Foundation Funding is mapped as the amplifier: it converts wealth, access, expertise, or organization into political voice.

## Gift

funds participation, information, campaigns, and durable capacity; through Foundation Funding, that capacity becomes available for deliberate use.

## Wound / Shadow

lets unequal capital become unequal agenda power without visible command; Foundation Funding can then reproduce the very arrangement it claims to change.

## Conditions

- scale and jurisdiction are explicit
- affected people and absent stakeholders are named
- time horizon and countermoves are considered

## Strategic meaning

Use Foundation Funding to identify the operative target, resource, dependency, decision forum, and likely countermove. Ask what would make the mechanism stronger, weaker, more legitimate, or less necessary.

## Divinatory meaning

The Amplifier enters through Foundation Funding. Read for the capacity seeking expression, the cost displaced from view, and the relationship that changes if the frame moves.

**Question:** What changes when Foundation Funding becomes the unit of analysis rather than background?

## Game function

**event.** Reveal one hidden dependency connected to Foundation Funding; another player names a countermove. Initiative 4.

## Relationships

- **legitimizes — Think Tank:** Think Tank legitimizes Foundation Funding by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(synthesis; supported)_
- **amplifies — Public Hearing:** Public Hearing amplifies Foundation Funding by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_
- **counteracts — Neoliberalism:** Foundation Funding counteracts Neoliberalism by changing authority, participation, resources, information, legitimacy, timing, or the cost of cooperation. _(interpretive; tentative)_

## Countermaps and polarity prompts

- Read Foundation Funding from the viewpoint of the actor who bears its cost.
- Reverse cause and symptom: what if Foundation Funding is an effect of the system it appears to drive?
- Change the clock: what looks different over a day, an election cycle, a generation, and a century?
- Ask when the Gift becomes the Wound through scale, secrecy, intensity, latency, or unequal reciprocity.

## Epistemic and Sentinel note

Claim layers: synthesis, interpretive, symbolic_divinatory. Scope, jurisdiction, period, and source perspective may change the claim.
No node-specific Sentinel factors were recorded; ordinary source, audience, and context checks still apply.

## Visual direction

A text-free enamel expression of Foundation Funding: one dominant mechanism, one counterforce, raised warm-metal linework, midnight field, restrained civic red, teal, ivory, and amber. No party logo, national flag, sacred symbol, or recognizable person.

## Research / provenance

- [Understanding Ways to Support Federal Candidates](https://www.fec.gov/introduction-campaign-finance/understanding-ways-support-federal-candidates/) — Federal Election Commission, 2024. Federal campaign committees, independent expenditures, and contribution rules.
- [Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission](https://supreme.justia.com/cases/federal/us/558/310/) — Supreme Court of the United States, 2010. Majority, concurrence, and dissent on independent political spending.
- [Preventing Policy Capture](https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/preventing-policy-capture_9789264065239-en.html) — OECD, 2017. Mechanisms and safeguards concerning capture of public decision-making.

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Engine Output version 1.0.0; generated 2026-08-24T00:00:00Z. Sentinel annotations are stored separately in `sentinel/handoffs.json`.
