There's a famous quote from the founder of NED [0]:
> "A lot of what we do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA"
In the 1960s-70s, the US government found that covert foreign influence operations run by the CIA could seriously backfire when they were exposed. That's the reason why NED was founded. The idea was that a lot of this foreign influence can be done out in the open, removing the risk of scandal from exposure. It's an interesting approach that seems to have worked for the US.
Not seeing anything related to NATO and a lot of noble humanitarian efforts.