Various boards on which Obama sat in the late 90s granted nearly $2 million dollars to Bill Ayers' Small Schools Workshop. This archived webpagenotes over one million granted to Ayers' project by the CAC, but the Woods Fund and Joyce Foundation (on whose Boards Obama also sat) granted nearly an additional million in donations to Ayers' group during the same time period.

In addition to donations to Ayers' Small Schools Workshop group, the same foundations donated $761,100 to a related group run by Ayers’ brother, John Ayers. In fact, in 2001 Obama would join the "leadership council" of a successor to the CAC called the Chicago Public Education Fund. Also on the leadership council of the group was Bill Ayers' brother John. (Documents demonstrating this connection have been hidden from view on the internet archive using robots.txt).