How think tanks misdirect society

[Guest guest]

http://www.mediatransparency.org/movement.htm

 

Moving a Public Policy Agenda:

 

The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations

 

From a report by NCRP

 

For more than three decades, conservative strategists have mounted an

extraordinary effort to reshape politics and public policy priorities

at the national, state and local level. Although this effort has often

been described as a " war of ideas, " it has involved far more than

scholarly debate within the halls of academe.

 

Indeed, waging the war of ideas has required the development of a vast

and interconnected institutional apparatus. Since the 1960s,

conservative forces have shaped public consciousness and influenced

elite opinion, recruited and trained new leaders, mobilized core

constituencies, and applied significant rightward pressure on

mainstream institutions, such as Congress, state legislatures,

colleges and universities, the federal judiciary and philanthropy itself.

 

Thirteen years ago, this apparatus was appropriately described by

moderate Republican and author John Saloma as the " new conservative

labyrinth. " At the time he wrote, Saloma was warning that this

labyrinth constituted " a major new presence in American politics. " If

left unchecked, Saloma predicted, it would continue to pull the

nation's political center sharply to the right.

 

His analysis was prescient. Today, the conservative labyrinth is

larger, more sophisticated, and increasingly able to influence what

gets on - and what stays off - the public policy agenda. From the

decision to abandon the federal guarantee of cash assistance to the

poor to on-going debates about the federal tax structure to growing

discussion of medical savings accounts and the privatization of social

security, conservative policy ideas and political rhetoric continue to

dominate the nation's political conversation, reflecting what

political scientist Walter Dean Burnham has called the " hegemony of

market theology. "

 

In a major research report, the National Committee for Responsive

Philanthropy (NCRP) documented the role that conservative foundations

have played in developing and sustaining America's conservative

labyrinth. It offers an aggregate accounting and detailed analysis of

the 1992-1994 grantmaking of 12 core conservative foundations, the

results of which confirm what has been reported in more anecdotal

terms: that conservative foundations have invested sizable resources

to create and sustain an infrastructure of policy, advocacy and

training institutions committed to the achievement of conservative

policy goals.

 

In just a three-year period, the 12 foundations awarded $210 million

to support a wide array of conservative projects and institutions. It

is not simply the volume of money being invested that merits serious

attention, but the way in which these investments have helped to build

the power and influence of the conservative policy movement. These 12

funders directed a majority of their grants to organizations and

programs that pursue an overtly ideological agenda based on industrial

and environmental deregulation, the privatization of government

services, deep reductions in federal anti-poverty spending and the

transfer of authority and responsibility for social welfare from the

national government to the charitable sector and state and local

government. Unlike many nonprofits which feel the dual pressure to

demonstrate their uniqueness to funders and to downplay their ideology

and public policy advocacy, conservative grantees are rewarded for

their shared political vision and public policy activism. They are

heavily supported to market policy ideas, cultivate public leadership,

lobby policy makers, and build their constituency base.

 

Conservative Foundation Grants

A Summary

 

In a presentation at the Philanthropy Roundtable's 1995 annual

conference, Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude

R. Lambe charitable foundations, made good use of market metaphors to

outline how foundations can exert the greatest impact on public

policy. Adapting laissez-faire economist Friedreich Hayek's model of

the production process to social change grant-making, Fink argued that

the translation of ideas into action requires the development of

intellectual raw materials, their conversion into specific policy

products, and the marketing and distribution of these products to

citizen-consumers.

 

Grantmakers, Fink argued, would do well to invest in change along the

entire production continuum, funding scholars and university programs

where the intellectual framework for social transformation is

developed, think tanks where scholarly ideas get translated into

specific policy proposals, and implementation groups to bring these

proposals into the political marketplace and eventually to consumers.

 

Over the past two decades, conservative foundations have broadly

followed such a model, investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a

cross-section of institutions dedicated to conservative political and

policy change. This [web site] examines 12 of these foundations. They

include:

 

* Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

* Carthage Foundation

* Earhart Foundation

* Charles G.Koch, David H. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable

foundations

* Phillip M. McKenna Foundation

* J.M. Foundation

* John M. Olin Foundation

* Henry Salvatori Foundation

* Sarah Scaife Foundation

* Smith Richardson Foundation

 

In 1994 these foundations controlled over $1 billion in assets

[Editor's note: By 2000, the philanthropies had given away at least $1

billion since 1985, according to the Media Transparency grants

database], awarded $300 million in grants, and targeted $210 million

to support conservative policy and institutional reform objectives.

 

The money was targeted at the following areas:

 

* Conservative scholarship programs, training the next generation

of conservative thinkers and activists and reverse progressive

curricula and policy trends on the nation's college and university

campuses.

* Build and strengthen a national infrastructure of think tanks

and advocacy groups, much to institutions with a major focus on

domestic policy issues, and to institutes focused on American national

security interests, foreign policy and global affairs.

* Finance alternative media outlets, media watchdog groups,and

public television and radio for specific, issue-oriented public

affairs or news reporting.

* Assist conservative pro-market law firms and other law-related

projects and organizations.

* Support a network of regional and state-based think tanks and

advocacy institutions. Work to transform the social views and giving

practices of the nation's religious and philanthropic leaders.

 

While the size of these foundations' grantmaking programs may pale in

comparison to some of the nation's largest foundations, these funders

have contributed in significant ways to the rightward shift in the

nation's political conversation and public policy priorities. Several

factors account for their effectiveness:

 

1) First, these foundations bring a clarity of vision and strong

political intention to their grantmaking programs. The grants data

themselves, as well as public information gathered on the missions and

program activities of major grantees, reveal the willingness of these

foundations to fund agressive and entrepreneurial organizations

committed to advancing the basic tenets of modern American

conservatism: uregulated markets and limited government.

 

2) Second, conservative grantmaking has focused on building strong

institutionsacross almost every major strategic sector of America. The

analysis of grants reveals that these foundations have provided

substantial general operating rather than project-specific support to

a variety of institutions. Almost half of all non-academic grant

dollars to think tanks, advocacy organizations, media outlets, and

other groups with a public policy or institutional reform orientation

was awarded on an unrestricted basis.

 

3) Third, the foundations have recognized that federal budget

priorities and policy decisions exert such significant impact on the

issues and concerns at the state, local and neighborhood level that

the national policy framework cannot be ignored. They thus invested

substantial resources in think tanks and advocacy organizations with a

major focus on national policy and the capacity to reach a broad

national audience. Also, the foundations concentrated their grant

resources, as just 18 percent of the grantees received over 75 percent

of grant dollars awarded.

 

4) Fourth, the foundations have invested heavily in institutions and

projects geared toward the marketing of conservative policy ideas

Through the provision of both general operating and project-specific

support, these funders have enabled policy institutions to develop

aggressive marketing campaigns, media outreach efforts, and new

communications tools with which to build their constituency base,

mobilize public opinion and network with other organizations around a

common reform agenda.

 

5) Fifth, the foundations have provided considerable support to create

and cultivate public intellectuals and policy leaders with strong free

market, limited government perspectives. They provided tens of

millions of dollars to subsidize students' education and place them as

intems in conservative policy institutions, media outlets, advocacy

organizations and law firms. They spent millions more to help

established conservatives maintain public prominence and visibility

through senior fellowships and residencies at prominent think tanks

and research institutions.

 

6) Sixth, the foundations targeted grants across the institutional

spectrum in recognition that a variety of institutions and reform

strategies are required for effective transformation and policy change.

 

7) Finally, many of these foundations have engaged in similar funding

efforts for as long as two decades. Their steady and generous support

has anchored key conservative institutions financially, giving them a

tremendous offensive capacity to influence specific policies and

audiences, and also to shape the overall framework in which important

fiscal, regulatory and social policy decisions are made.

 

Structure of the Movement:

 

* Academic Sector Organizations and Programs

* National Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups

* Media Groups

* Legal Organizations

* State and Regional Think Tanks and Advocacy Groups

* Religious Sector Organizations

* Philanthropic Institutions andNetworks