Ever wonder who is funding the foreign policy experts quoted in media and testifying to Congress?
Introducing the Think Tank Funding Tracker.
This new database tracks donations flowing from Pentagon contractors, foreign governments, and the US government to the top 50 foreign policy think tanks in the US.
thinktankfundingtracker.org
You can browse a think tank and see who funds them…
…or look at a specific donor and see where they are splashing their dollars.
So what did we find in compiling this database?
Defense companies, led by Northrop Grumman, contributed around $35 million to these think tanks in the last five years alone.
Foreign governments contributed even more, generously giving more than $110 million. The UAE, the UK, and Qatar are the top donor countries.
The US government contributed just under $1.5 billion in the past five years, most of which came from the Department of Defense.
Funding can lead to self censorship and sympathetic policy recommendations. At its worst, it could even lead to outright censorship.
sciencespo.hal.science/hal-04017574/d…
Donors are aware of these benefits. Some think tanks even openly advertise the influence that corporations can buy through sponsorship programs.
Money talks, and Washington is long overdue for an uncomfortable conversation about the corporations and foreign governments funding its experts.
That conversation starts with dark money think tanks. Think tanks are not required to disclose their funding. Over a third of the top think tanks disclose *nothing* at all about their donors.
To encourage more transparency, we assigned a score to each think tank based on how much they disclose about their funding. They range from transparent and partially transparent think tanks like these ones to…
…think tanks that disclose nothing at all. Some of these dark money think tanks, such as @FDD and @washingtoninst testify to Congress all the time about foreign policy.
Read our policy brief on these findings, and more, with @BenFreemanDC
quincyinst.org/research/big-i…
Above all, I would encourage folks to sift through the data to see what you can find. Check out the about page for more on methodology and download the data for yourself. This database will be updated every year as new annual reports come out.
thinktankfundingtracker.org/think-tanks/
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