Foundations Pour Money Into Washington Think Tanks

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Compiled by Noelle Barton, Caroline Bermudez, Maria Di Mento, Candie Jones, and Cassie Moore.

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January 30, 2008

Foundations Pour Money Into Washington Think Tanks

Research institutions in Washington are growing not only in size and scope, but also perhaps in policy influence, reports The New York Times.

As think tanks such as the Center for Strategic and International Studies, the Council on Foreign Relations, the United States Institute of Peace, and the Brookings Institution buy more land in Washington to accommodate their growing staffs and pumped-up operating budgets, their research conferences, policy papers, and a tight presidential race are lending the organizations a new status.

“While President Bush was bad for the world, he was good for our business,” said John Podesta, the chief executive of the Center for American Progress, a four-year-old group with an annual operating budget of about $23-million. The group receives strong support from the Open Society Institute, founded by the financier George Soros.

Philanthropy’s increasing interest in policy work by philanthropists is fueling the budgets of other Washington think tanks as well. The Center for Global Development has received huge donations from foundations, such as a $24- million grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The Gates foundation has also given millions of dollars to Brookings, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Council on Foreign Relations.

Some experts who study think tanks worry that donors will exercise influence over the results of the groups’ studies. “The [research] agenda is really being distorted by interlopers — they’re the donors,” said James McGann, a professor of political science at Villanova University. “Most people don’t want to talk about it because they don’t want to bite the hand that feeds them.”

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