Talk:Cascade Policy Institute

Ties to DonorsTrust, a Koch Conduit

DonorsTrust is considered a "donor-advised fund," which means that it divides its funds into separate accounts for individual donors, who then recommend disbursements from the accounts to different non-profits. Funds like DonorsTrust are not uncommon in the non-profit sector, but they do cloak the identity of the original donors because the funds are typically distributed in the name of DonorsTrust rather than the original donors. Very little was known about DonorsTrust until late 2012 and early 2013, when the Guardian and others published extensive reports on what Mother Jones called "the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement."

The Cascade Policy Institute received an aggregate of $535,000 in funding from DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund between 2010 and 2011.

A report by the Center for Public Integrity exposes a number of DonorsTrust funders, many of which have ties to the Koch brothers. One of the most prominent funders is the Knowledge and Progress Fund, a Charles Koch-run organization and one of the group's largest known contributors, having donated nearly $9 million from 2005 to 2012. Other contributors known to have donated at least $1 million to DonorsTrust include the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation.

Since its inception in 1999, DonorsTrust has been used by conservative foundations and individuals to discretely funnel nearly $400 million to like-minded think tanks and media outlets. According to the organization's tax documents, in 2011, DonorsTrust contributed a total of $86 million to conservative organizations. Many recipients had ties to the State Policy Network (SPN), a wide collection of conservative state-based think tanks and media organizations that focus on shaping public policy and opinion. In 2013, the Center for Media and Democracy released a special report on SPN. Those who received DonorsTrust funding included media outlets such as the Franklin Center and the Lucy Burns Institute, as well as think tanks such as SPN itself, the Heartland Institute, Illinois Policy Institute, Independence Institute, Mackinac Center for Public Policy, South Carolina Policy Council, American Legislative Exchange Council, Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs, and the Cascade Policy Institute.

Edit note

I have relocated the following data from the article page pending either one reference for all the information or a reference for each of the amounts. Once this has been referenced it will be moved back to the article page. --Bob Burton 16:27, 26 July 2009 (EDT)

Other funding sources have included:

• the Roe Foundation gave $25,000 in 2006, $50,000 in 2007, and $30,000 in 2008;
• the Jaquelin Hume Foundation contributed $25,000 from in 2006 and 2007;
• the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation donated $10,000 in both 2006 and 2007;
• Castle Rock (Coors Family) donated $25,000 in 2006 and $30,000 in 2008;
• the Jeld-Wen Foundation donated $40,000 in 2007;
• the State Policy Network gave $42,321 in 2007;
• the JM Foundation gave $25,000 in 2006 and 2008; and
• the Friedman Foundation for Education Choice gave $1,000 in 2007 for a Milton Friedman birthday party.

Rebekah Wilce, A Reporters' Guide to the "State Policy Network" -- the Right-Wing Think Tanks Spinning Disinformation and Pushing the ALEC Agenda in the States, PRWatch.org, April 4, 2013.

Andy Kroll, Exposed: The Dark-Money ATM of the Conservative Movement, Mother Jones, February 5, 2013.

Suzanne Goldenberg, "Secret funding helped build vast network of climate denial thinktanks," The Guardian, February 14, 2013.

Center for Media and Democracy, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund Grant Recipients, SourceWatch.org, accessed November 2014.

Paul Abowd, Donors use charity to push free-market policies in states, Center for Public Integrity, February 14, 2013.

Donors Trust, GuideStar.org, IRS form 990, 2011.