Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
In 1987, the J. Roderick MacArthur Foundation awarded a group called Alternatives to Militarism the first known grant to challenge military regulations on homosexual behavior. The topic worked its way Read more…
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Koch Programs for Students
The Charles Koch Institute was founded in 2011 by the billionaire industrialist to run educational programs that give students and professionals a deeper understanding of markets and politics. Its main Read more…
A New Top Dog in Public-policy Funding
Hedge funder Thomas Steyer made lots of money developing new coal mines in Asia. More recently, he decided fossil fuels are evil, and developed a taste for policy fights on Read more…
Fracking Gets Drilled
Drilling horizontally into shale and then cracking it by pumping in water under high pressure—a process known as “fracking”—has had stunning effects on U.S. oil and gas production, turning the Read more…
Exposing Top Students to the Classics
Retired investor Roger Hertog has made it a centerpiece of his philanthropy to create first-rate intellectual seminars that can inspire an interest in politics among top students who are likely Read more…
$27 Million to Pass Obamacare
In the summer of 2008, the three largest unions of government employees and a collection of left-wing organizations including ACORN, MoveOn.org, the Center for American Progress, Alliance for a Just Read more…
Painting North Carolina Redder
While working for the governor of North Carolina in the 1980s, Art Pope became frustrated by a lack of organizations able to supply well-developed ideas for conservative political reform. After Read more…
Refocusing Governance in Wisconsin
Back in 1987 the Milwaukee-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation provided a $2.8 million startup grant to launch the Wisconsin Policy Research Institute, a think tank focused on the economic Read more…
Painting Colorado Bluer
In 2004, Colorado was a solidly Republican state: the governor, both U.S. Senators, and five of seven House members belonged to the GOP, and President George W. Bush won the Read more…
Advocating for Generational Fairness in Fiscal Policy
Pete Peterson became a billionaire as co-founder of the Blackstone investment firm, but he was the son of poor Greek immigrants and never lost his distaste for profligacy and waste. Read more…
Cause-oriented Journalism
Take one scoop of donors looking for new ways to affect public opinion and government policy, mix with three scoops of mainstream journalism bleeding red ink in the face of Read more…
Designed to Win Climate-policy Fights
“Left unattended, human-induced climate change could overshadow all our other efforts to cure diseases, reduce poverty, prevent warfare and preserve biodiversity. Global, collective action is paramount…. How can philanthropists turn Read more…
ED in ’08
A year and a half before the Presidential election, the foundations of Bill Gates and Eli Broad—which together had already given more than $2 billion to various education-reform causes—announced a Read more…
Nudging States Left
A year after a group of liberal donors set up the Democracy Alliance, the same forces joined together to establish the Committee on States in 2006. Just as the Democracy Read more…
Intelligence Squared Debates
Robert Rosenkranz made a fortune in insurance and investing, and when he began to give money away his first interest was in efforts to improve public policy and governance. He Read more…
Stryker Roils Michigan Politics
Jon Stryker, the billionaire heir to the Stryker medical-instruments fortune, set up the Arcus Foundation in 2000. It almost immediately became a national force for lawmaking and electioneering on behalf Read more…
Democracy Alliance
Rob Stein had worked for the Democratic National Committee, the Clinton-Gore campaign and administration, and a private-equity firm. Then he set out on a new task: to convince wealthy liberal Read more…
Skoll Pioneers “Filmanthropy”
Movies with a political message are hardly a new phenomenon, but never before has a donor made social change via film the main focus of his philanthropic investing. In 2004, Read more…
Progressives Go to War Against Bush
Early in the war on terror, elected Democrats mostly avoided harsh criticism of the commander in chief. But liberal donors George Soros and Peter Lewis were vehemently opposed to President Read more…
Remaking the Think Tank Into Political War Room
As they prepared for the 2004 presidential election and beyond, a small group of liberal donors led by bankers Herb and Marion Sandler concluded that the Left needed a new Read more…