Philanthropists bothered by the conformity of liberal orthodoxy on college campuses have long supported outposts where alternative views could be offered to a new generation of young students. The founding Read more…
A center devoted to market-based economics and philosophy, called the Austrian Economics Program, was established at Rutgers University in the late-1970s with a grant from philanthropist Charles Koch. It was Read more…
The Human Rights Campaign began its life in 1980 as a PAC—a mechanism for funneling campaign donations to elect gay-friendly politicians. In 1982 the organization distributed $140,000 to 118 congressional Read more…
After the liberal economist John Galbraith filmed The Age of Uncertainty, a television series for the BBC, several American philanthropists and corporations looked for a way to even the ideological Read more…
In 1980, the mother of a 13-year-old California girl who was killed by a repeat drunk driver founded a nonprofit to fight back. Mothers Against Drunk Driving helped set the Read more…
In 1980, Irving Kristol encouraged donors to support a new conservative student publication at the University of Chicago. Before long, the John M. Olin Foundation and other donors were building Read more…
While visiting the U.S. after World War II, entrepreneur Antony Fisher was impressed by the work of agriculturalists at Cornell University who were transforming chicken farming from a cottage industry Read more…
Shortly before businessman John MacArthur died, as one of the two or three wealthiest men in America, the insurance and real-estate magnate created a foundation. He was a selfish and Read more…
In a 1978 referendum, nearly two thirds of California voters approved Proposition 13, which lowered and capped the state’s property taxes and heralded the coming of a nationwide “tax revolt” Read more…
Decades of research have shown that the large majority of working journalists define themselves as political liberals. Conservatives who consider this a problem have made efforts, with donor support, to Read more…
When businessman Charles Koch learned that Libertarian Party leader Ed Crane was thinking about leaving politics, he asked what it would take to keep him involved. Crane suggested that libertarianism Read more…
Among many other public-policy causes, the Open Society Foundations funded by financial speculator George Soros have been leading donors to gay rights. Their Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Intersex program Read more…
Twenty-three years after the Tides Foundation invented the funding collective for public-policy causes (see 1976 entry), liberty-minded donors created a counterpart organization. Called DonorsTrust, it helps philanthropists create donor-advised funds Read more…
Unhappy at the prospect of Bill Clinton’s impeachment, software entrepreneurs Joan Blades and Wes Boyd set up an online petition that soon grew into a major force for mobilizing liberal Read more…
Investor Theodore Forstmann and Walmart heir John Walton were disappointed by waffling in Congress in the mid-1990s over a school-choice pilot program. There were proposals, enthusiastically backed by local residents, Read more…
In 1982, social scientists George Kelling and James Q. Wilson published an article arguing that speedy public reaction to petty disorders like a broken window could head off more serious Read more…
When Arizona and California became the first states to approve the “medical” use of marijuana in 1996, it was currency speculator George Soros who, as the New York Times put Read more…
In the decade between 1994 and 2004, philanthropists proclaiming the importance of “taking the money out of politics” spent more than $140 million on politics. Eight liberal foundations supplied 88 Read more…
In 1994, Tim Gill, founder of the software company Quark, set up his Gill Foundation with a fierce focus on changing public policies and officeholders to advance gay rights. A Read more…
Houston real-estate developer Dick Weekley worried that runaway litigation costs in trial-lawyer-friendly Texas were imperiling the state’s business environment. So in 1994 he and several allies founded a nonprofit called Read more…