Closed acquisition: 9 September 2026. This packet uses donor records and one already retained recipient record. It does not establish an executed CMA agreement or a payment receipt.
Oak's own 2025 Annual Report, PDF/printed page 24, lists Check My Ads — USD 600,000 (3 years). The purpose is core support for greater transparency and fairness in digital advertising. It appears in the International Human Rights programme. The annual report presents its list as 2025 grant-making; the amount is the listed three-year grant, not an annual amount or evidence that $600,000 reached CMA in 2025. Exact approval, start, end and instalment dates are absent from this entry. [Current donor original](http[local research file] retained as oak-annual2025-current.pdf; visual check oak-annual2025-current-p24.png.
| Field | Supported reading |
|---|---|
| Public grantor attribution | Oak Foundation. The report's page 4 describes a group of philanthropic organisations; it does not identify which legal entity executed this grant. |
| Recipient as printed | Check My Ads. This row supplies no legal suffix, EIN or registered address. Do not silently expand it to a verified contracting entity. |
| Amount and duration | USD 600,000 over a reported three-year grant. No per-year allocation or payment schedule is given. |
| Resource classification | Donor-reported core-support grant in its 2025 report. Cash disbursement and recipient recognition remain unverified. |
| Specific campaign allocation | None disclosed in the grant entry. No link to the February 2025 Senate letters or the Ofcom submission is established by this record. |
The currently linked report has production metadata dated 20 March 2026 and modification metadata dated 3 June 2026. These are file-production dates, not the exact date it became public or the date of grant approval. Its page 6 reports grants made; pages 6–7 do not supply a CMA payment reconciliation. Pages 8–9 discuss general support, evaluation and reporting, including selected pilots; they do not disclose CMA-specific reporting terms.
Source reuse: root checked the current case and identified this exact application guide as existing source w3-oak-grant-process, with the same URL and SHA-256. Its senior-decision role (w3-oak-senior-decision) and generic decision/letter relation already exist. This capture adds a current-link observation and scoped reread, not an independent corroborating source or a newly discovered approval mechanism. The new extension is the CMA grant.
The general process reveals where decisions occur. In the currently linked [application guide](http[local research file] PDF pages 2–3, programme officers screen strategic fit and work with applicants. Staff, leadership and trustees may assess an early concept; a complete application is reviewed by the programme officer, finance team, programme director and possibly an external reviewer. The programme officer recommends a funding decision to senior foundation members. On approval, the guide describes a grant letter reviewed and signed by both parties, followed by a bank wire. Its timelines are approximate. This is a public description of a process, not proof that this particular letter was signed, what it required, or when a payment occurred. The guide's metadata dates to 28 November 2019; its continuing public link was observed on 9 September 2026. Original: oak-application-guide.pdf, all three pages read; page 3 visually checked in oak-application-guide-p3.png.
The live [grant-making page](http[local research file] describes recipients setting their priorities and Oak matching existing goals to its programmes, using flexible project funding or core support. Renewals are described as separate grants. The current [FAQ](http[local research file] especially “About” questions 4–9, “Grant-making” questions 1–2, “Due diligence and review,” and “What Oak Foundation does not fund” questions 4 and 6, says core support is unrestricted and recipients direct their work. It also identifies financial, safeguarding and internal-control review, continued discussion during grants, and exclusions for election campaigns or party-affiliated political activity. These are current public policies, not recovered historical CMA contractual clauses. The general 20% organisational / 50% project support norms allow exceptions and cannot establish CMA's budget, Oak's share of it, or a three-year grant's annual allocation.
The strongest defensible mechanism is resource selection and sustained organisational capacity, with donor screening and an expected agreement, alongside an express public policy of recipient independence. That is stronger than a mere donor-roster association. It still does not show Oak chose CMA's targets, approved particular submissions, or purchased outcomes. The rival explanation supported by the public policies is that Oak selected an independently directed organisation already pursuing aligned goals. The decisive evidence needed to distinguish more specific conditions is the CMA grant letter and incorporated application, budget, reporting schedule and amendments, together with payment/recognition records. These were not acquired; the generic workflow only identifies the likely instrument.
For historical context, CMA's retained 2025 annual report, PDF35, labels foundation grants as 82.8% of funding. That chart is not a dollar denominator for this three-year Oak amount and does not reconcile an Oak payment. Reused original: ../cma-danish-support-wave-2026-09-09/cma-annual2025.pdf, page 35 text read in this lane; root previously visually checked the chart. [Recipient report](http[local research file]
Source custody and finite frontier: the initially indexed March-path PDF returned 404 through the official reader and one ordinary GET; that route is closed. Its error body is preserved separately. Oak's actual homepage then supplied a different current June-path PDF link, which was captured successfully. This was an observed publisher link, not a guessed filename retry. The [latest-grants page](http[local research file] directs readers to the annual report while a new database is being prepared; no database or application system was queried. The FAQ, grant-making page and linked guide were read for the applicable public framework; no extra branding, safeguarding-policy or family-history branch was pursued.
oak-captures.json records exact URLs, acquisition times where retained, SHA-256 hashes, ancestry and reading scope. The 60-page report was captured and text-extracted in full, but substantive reading was scoped to PDF1, 3–9, 22 and 24, with page 5 partial and page 24 visual. Other pages were not silently promoted to read evidence. Originals and derivative files remain distinct. No new graph, current-work, forest, presentation or package changes were made. Acquisition is closed pending root review.