Summaries of Bradley Foundation Grants to State Policy Network Groups  
Center for Media and Democracy August 29, 2017  
  
Note: Unless otherwise  indicated,  the source for the numbers  below are Bradley Foundation  “ Grant 
History” documents.  The State Policy Network  divides membership  into two groups: affiliate  and 
associate.  According  to its website,  an affiliate  member  “operates  as a full service, state-based  think 
tank addressing  a variety of relevant  policy issues. They operate  independently  within their state, and 
not as part of a state chapter,  franchise,  or other effort of a separate  organization.”  Associate  members, 
“are think tanks or other organizations  committed  to developing  and advancing  market-oriented  public 
policy,” and are “national  in scope and are not necessarily  oriented  toward a single state.”   

 

State Policy Network  
  
2016: (Recommended) $50,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to SPN to $350,000. “Five years ago, SPN attempted to enhance its policy 
mobilization efforts. For example, it provided support to the Bradley supported MacIver Institute 
during Wisconsin’s attention getting public policy scuffles over employee rights in general and public 
employee collective bargaining in particular flying communications operatives and labor policy 
experts into Madison. SPN continues to try providing similar support to its other member 
organizations elsewhere. It has increased the resources available to its think tanks and amplified the 
impact of policy solutions they develop, including by building connections between its members and 
local grassroots policy activists.”  
  
2015: $50,000 to support general operations.   
  
2014: $35,000 in support of its state based strategy to advance free enterprise.  
  

AFFILIATE MEMBERS  
  

Center of the American Experiment (MN)  
  
2016: (Recommended) $25,000 to support research and activities on the effects of family 
fragmentation. This grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to CAE to $305,000. 
“Specifically, in part at Bradley’s and (Brookings Institution’s Ron) Haskin’s urging, CAE is looking into 
ways in which apprenticeships might make men more employable and thus more ‘marriageable.’ Also 
at Bradley’s urging, it is looking to create partnerships in the African American communities of 
Minnesota.”  
  
2015: $25,000 to support research and activities on the effects of family fragmentation.   
  
2014: $50,000 to support its research on the cultural role of marriage and fatherhood. Bradley 
awarded a grant to CAE president Mitch Pearlstein in 2013 for a project investigating how family 
fragmentation is contributing to a less cohesive nation and how policy can address the issue (Broken 
Bonds: What Family Fragmentation Means for America’s Future). “Pearlstein attributes the idea for 
the book and the methodology employed in its research and writing to his participation in the Bradley 
Working Group on the Family… Pearlstein in his follow on two part project will select 15 to 20 clergy, 
 

1 

 scholars, and lay leaders to engage in a two part exercise on whether churches and religious 
institutions are doing enough to reinforce marriage… Pearlstein will be pursuing questions such as: 
what, if anything their parishes, congregations and assemblies are doing to strengthen marriages in 
general and reduce nonmarital births in particular; what is standing in the way of them doing more; 
what do they think they and other religious institutions should be doing that they are not; and how 
can churches and other religious institutions provide more space and opportunities for ex offenders 
to spend more time with law abiding citizens away from corrupting influences that helped send them 
to prison in the first place… In the second part, Pearlstein will commission 10 to 12 clergy and 
scholars to contribute a complementary variety of essay to an anthology. In this Anthology, the select 
group of writers will address the question of what religious institutions and their leaders do to 
strengthen their voice of matters of personal well being and family stability.”  
 

Civitas Institute and John Locke Foundation (NC) 

 
2015-2016: (Barder Fund): $1.5 million over 3 years shared with associate SPN member John Locke 
Foundation to “create a comprehensive and disruptive communications infrastructure…around four 
primary elements: radio, online content aggregation, mobile applications, and an AP style news 
service for local newspapers.” This grant brings the total amount of Bradley funding to Civitas to 
$1,920,000. (Source: 2015 990, Grant History, 2015). 
 
2015: $160,000 to support a litigation center and general operations. “Following the model of 
existing state based litigation centers and helped by the Goldwater Institute’s Bradley supported 
state litigation alliance, Civitas is creating an in house center to be led by an experienced attorney 
who will lead the execution of a comprehensive legal strategy to complement the work done by it 
and its allies in the state.” 
 
2014: $160,000 to support general operations and a litigation center. “Civitas has been one of the 
biggest parts of one the most successful such infrastructures in the United States during the past 
decade and especially during the last year and a half.” Its president is the former director of AFP NC. 
In 2014 Civitas focused on “fiscal policy, education policy, holding government accountable and 
challenging the narratives of the Left.”  
 

Empire Center for Public Policy (NY) 

 
2016 (Recommended): $50,000 to support general operations. If distributed, this will be the first 
Bradley grant to the Empire Center for Public Policy (ECPP). According to the grant proposal record, 
Bradley wants to fund ECPP to bust unions in New York using tactics the Freedom Foundation has 
employed in Washington and Oregon. ECPP will use Bradley funds to encourage day care workers to 
drop out of unions and stop by dues. “Empire is willing to learn from and seems to have the stomach 
for implementing the overall strategies and confrontational tactics of the Freedom Foundation in 
pursuing Bradley’s programmatic employee rights goals – in a state that matters, given its 
government unions’ funding of the Left, its causes, and its other organizations nationally.” 
 

Foundation for Government Accountability (FL) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $350,000 to support a project on “reducing the welfare state and restoring 
 

2 

 the working class.” This grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to FGA to $925,000. 
“FGA has worked to advance reforms that move people off of welfare as well. In this case working 
with the Bradley supported American Legislative Exchange Council, and the Secretaries’ Innovation 
Group, FGA has conducted research on and public education about the benefits of work 
requirements and fraud audits.” FGA wants to expand target states from original 22 to include 
another 19 more. 
 
2015: $350,000 to support public education about Medicaid and a project on reducing the welfare 
state and restoring the working class. “During the past couple of years, FGA’s principal project has 
been to educate the policymakers and the public in specifically targeted states about the benefits of 
rejecting Medicaid expansion under Obamacare… Along with the Bradley supported Galen Institute, 
(CEO Tarren) Bragdon and FGA have contributed constructively to the health care debate. Its topic 
specific, in depth focus on state level reform has been of a piece with much of Bradley’s other recent 
strategic grantmaking—including, among others, to the American Legislative Exchange Council, the 
Center for Energy Innovation and Independence’s group of state attorneys general, the Goldwater 
Institute’s state litigation alliance, the Interstate Policy Alliance, the Manhattan Institute for Policy 
Research’s Center for state and Local Leadership, the Sagamore Institute, Think Freely Media, the 
State Human Service Secretaries’ Innovation Group and the State Policy Network.” 
 

Freedom Foundation (WA) 

 
2015-2016 (Barder Fund): $1.5 million over 3 years to expand its Union Transparency and Reform 
Project and to open an office in Portland. Freedom Foundation is “encouraged to work with” SPN 
members the Washington Policy Center and Cascade Policy Center. With this grant, Freedom 
Foundation will have received $2,340,500 from the Bradley Foundation. (Source: Grant History, 2014, 
plus Bradley Foundation 2014 and 2015 IRS 990.) 
 
2014: $100,000 to support the Union Transparency and Reform Project. CEO Tom McCabe wanted to 
expand Freedom Foundation’s capacity to “expose how the Big Labor agenda hurts state taxpayers… 
at both state and municipal levels.” Specifically, it wanted to “aggressively educate the public and 
policymakers about the effects of state level proposals” to: 
 

•
 

•
 

End the exemption from the Open Public Meetings Act for state employee collective 
bargaining sessions; 
Curb the practice of overcharging employees who opt out of a union and pay only a 
representation fee; 

•

Extend the time window for workers to decertify an unwanted union; 

•

Require the state to compile and maintain an online library of collective bargaining 
agreements; and 

 

 

•

Force public sector unions to make basic financial information accessible to the public, just 
as private sector unions have to do. 

 
 
 

3 

 Georgia Center for Opportunity (GA) 
 
2015-2016  (Barder  Fund):  $1.5  million  over  3  years  to  create  a  multi  pronged  Health  Families 
Initiative “to measurably increase the number of healthy relationships, strong marriages, and stable 
families in metro Atlanta.” 
 

Goldwater Institute (AZ) 

 
2015: $250,000 to support a state based litigation alliance (See more in 2014). As of this grant, the 
Goldwater Institute has received $815,000 from the Bradley Foundation. Goldwater started the 
alliance “at Bradley’s behest and with special, substantial support—to expand the capacity of state 
think tanks to include litigation within their institutional skill sets… Goldwater’s newly formed state 
litigation alliance retains great potential to continue maximizing the benefit of Bradley’s much other 
recent strategic grantmaking to improve conservative state infrastructure.” 
 
2014: $350,000 in first time support for a state based litigation alliance tentatively named the 
Goldwater Litigation Alliance (GLA), “an effort begun in large part at Bradley’s behest to expand the 
capacity of state think tanks to include litigation within their institutional skill sets.” Goldwater’s 
Center for Constitutional Litigation (CCL) “has established itself as a leader in developing state based 
strategies to protect freedom against further governmental intrusion. Under the leadership and with 
the ‘light touch’ of Bradley Prize recipient Clint Bolick, it has offered advice to state think tanks that 
will have led to the creation of 12 similar centers, including the Bradley supported WILL… Many of 
them already send representatives to Bolick chaired meetings during the larger annual meetings of 
the Bradley supported Heritage Foundation’s Resource Bank and the also Bradley supported SPN.” 
 
As of 2014, Goldwater had six attorneys on staff including CCL. The grant proposal notes their work 
on 12 pending cases. The GLA will research and identify which states have the greatest potential to 
“advance state constitutional law.” Through GLA, CCL would train and mentor attorneys to lead or 
staff existing or newly created legal centers – “with an intensive ‘litigation boot camp’ for interested 
conscripts. GLA will provide intellectual leadership, as well, making a robust effort to teach others 
about key constitutional clauses, case law, and opportunities to make headway. On issues with which 
CCL has particular expertise, GLA will allow it to partner even more closely with groups that either 
lack a legal center or have a center lacking the requisite expertise.” 
 
CCL wanted to hire three additional attorneys to litigate out of state, one state litigation coordinator, 
and a paralegal all for GLA. Bradley notes that state constitutions contain greater constraints on 
governmental power, “they thus provide good avenues for the advancement of the Bradley brothers’ 
larger vision and their Foundation’s mission.”  
 

Illinois Policy Institute (IL) 

 
2015: $150,000 to support a Criminal Justice Center. As of this grant, IPI has received $170,000 from 
the Bradley Foundation. “IPI’s Criminal Justice Center provides an important opportunity to develop 
meaningful policy ideas and the most meaningful messaging ways to reach a market segment where 
the reform message resonates most. If successful, the Center’s efforts will lay a foundation to 
replicate elsewhere throughout the country.” 
 

4 

  

Independence Institute (CO) 
 
2016 (Barder Fund): $250,000 to support work on state infrastructure. This grant would bring the 
total amount of Bradley funding to Independence Institute to $1,450,000 (2004-2016). (Source: Grant 
History Record, 2016. Note: Grant records for recent years are not consistent or complete.) 
 
Independence president Jon Caldara “would like to do more ‘hyper localized’ training of local 
grassroots activists around Colorado to participate more effectively in public discourse and 
policymaking. ‘Small is the new big,’ according to Caldara. Colorado has 3,600 local governments. Not 
only does the Left exercise its power and coercion through these governments, he and 
[Independence Institute] believe, but it uses them as farm teams to groom people for higher office. 
Local government – including its ‘sub strata’ of even more numerous boards, councils and 
commissions, whether actual or advisory – is the Left’s bench. II wants to build a better bench and 
lays out a simple four point plan to try to do so. Its two year budget for the effort is $400,000, all of 
which it is requesting from Bradley… It would coordinate its activities with American Majority, the 
Centennial Institute and the Leadership Program of the Rockies.” 
•

“First, II is already compiling a database of every elected and appointed position in 
Jefferson County, including zoning boards, urban renewal boards, liquor boards – all of 
them. The database will include whether the position is elected or appointed, who 
currently fills it, and their terms of service, among other data points. With further funding, 
it would enlarge the database to include other areas.” 
 

•

“Second, II wishes to conduct outreach to those in the database who it thinks would be 
receptive, or even semi receptive, to develop relationships that might be helpful in the 
near or long term future. Meetings and strategy sessions could result after enough such 
relationships exist.” 

•

“Third, it would engage in active recruitment of others to participate in the project, 
including through the other normal tools of network building, potentially including micro 
targeting. This, it says, is the most labor intensive part of the effort.” 

•

“Fourth, II and its allies would support and maintain what it hopes to be an enlarged 
network of these individuals.” 

 

 

 
2015: $200,000 to support the Education Labor Project and the Energy Policy Center. The “Education 
Labor Project was created to support projects aimed at reducing the influence of local and state 
teacher unions by ending the practices of using public resources to promote their political agenda… 
The Project’s intensive outreach to individual members of the unions has proven to be successful. 
Through this means II has been able to persuade many members to ask for that portion of their dues 
to the union given over to political work to be returned to them.”  
 
“The nation needs Colorado—the state that the eco left and EPA hold up as a model—to do its part 
to maintain fracking and slow down the regulatory juggernaut. In its Caldara inspired aggressive way, 
II’s EPC is helping Colorado do this, and it’s helping others do so elsewhere.” 
 
Money will also be spent to bolster “the infrastructure there (CO), usually in the context of aggressive 

 

5 

 education reform, and including from several organizations in Denver and nearby Douglas County, 
Colo., which is south of Denver. These groups include the Common Sense Policy Roundtable, the 
Douglas County Educational Foundation, and Jeffco Students First.” 
 

John K. MacIver Institute for Public Policy (WI) 

2016 (recommended): $170,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to MacIver to $1,250,640. According to the grant proposal record, “In the 
coming year, McIver plans to put its resources behind a push for a 3 percent flat income tax for 
Wisconsin; a change in the mandatory sentencing rules for 17 year-olds; to continue the Raising up 
Wisconsin: How Minimum Wage Jobs Turned into Family Supporting Careers series; and a study on 
how to cut a billion dollars from state spending. At the same time, MacIver will continue its rapid 
response and fact-checking of the progressive movement. 
2015: $19,640 to support a special project. This grant was to fund Brett Healy’s update to The 
Progressive Non-Profit Movement in Wisconsin which will include information on the “Left’s new 
infrastructure, its funding, and its leadership.” 
2014: $170,000 for general operations. The Bradley grant proposal notes that MacIver is active on 
labor issues, supporting Gov. Walker’s Act 10 and in the “education reform” arena, mentioning a 
report it published on “Florida’s K-12 reforms that were the basis for many of the reforms debated (in 
2014) … MacIver has done a lot of work documenting the ‘protestors’ at the north woods mining 
sites… It is doubtful these stories would have been covered at all had MacIver not been present.” 
MacIver also collaborated with David Koch’s Americans for Prosperity Wisconsin on It’s Working, 
Wisconsin. 

Mackinac Center for Public Policy (MI) 
 
2015: $175,000 to support general operations and a mobile app project. As of this grant Mackinac 
has received $1,357,500 from the Bradley Foundation. “Mackinac is among the most aggressive and, 
as the right to work victory shows, successful state think tanks in America. With many Bradley 
supported allies, Mackinac and its labor, legal, and educational efforts provide good programmatic 
and organizational models for the rest of the country.” (Source: Grant History Document 2014, 
Bradley IRS 990 2014, 2015). 

 

The Bradley funded app is called VoteSpotter, “it provides a concise, neutral, ‘plain English’ 
descriptions of specific legislative actions, in real time.” 
 
2014: $50,000 to support general operations. “Bradley’s recent support of Mack 
inac has been styled as for its Labor and Education Project. Mackinac would also like to use some of 
any continued Bradley support for its Mackinac Center Legal Foundation (MCLF), the attorneys of 
which do most of their work on labor  and education related matters. Mackinac’s director of labor 
policy is Vincent Vernuccio, who chairs a committee of the labor task force of the Bradley supported 
American Legislative Exchange Council and previously has worked at the Bradley supported Capital 
Research Center and Bradley supported Competitive Enterprise Institute… MCLF spent much of last 
year helping to defend the new right to work law, in policy and legal arguments, as well as in the 
larger public discourse in the state and nationally… MCLF is working with the Bradley supported 
 

6 

 National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation on this and several other legal matters surrounding 
implementation of right to work in Michigan… On education, among other things, Mackinac is 
analyzing mroe[sic] than 200 collective bargaining agreements (CBAs) in the state, covering some 
75% of the state’s public school students, to see if and if so, how, they are adhering to the teacher 
tenure and  evaluation policy changes. The results will be an important, in depth, one state version 
of the larger, national study of CBAs being done by the Thomas B. Fordham Institute.” 
 
Support comes from more than 3,000 foundations, corporations and individuals. Its labor and 
education work has been funded by the Dow Foundation, Earhart Foundation, Herrick Foundation, 
and Chrysler. 

 
Nevada Policy Research Institute (NV) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $25,000 to support the anti union “National Employee Freedom Week” 
(NEFW). This would be the Bradley Foundation’s first grant to NPRI.  “NEFW is basically an advertising 
campaign to educate workers about that which they can do with their dissatisfaction about union 
representation.” 
 

Oklahoma Council of Public Affairs (OCPA) Liberty Foundation (OK) 
2014 - $250,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, OCPA Liberty Foundation has 
received a total of $400,000 from the Bradley Foundation. According to the Bradley grant proposal, 
“Last year, Bradley awarded the Liberty Foundation $150,000 for its Competitive Federalism Project 
(CFP), which attempted to augment and improved state-based efforts to diffuse the influence of the 
federal government and impact policymaking process… The Liberty Foundation’s CFP wellcompliments and does not compete with IPA and SPN. SPN, in fact, also financially supports CFP. The 
Liberty Foundation’s CFP released its major report, Competitive Federalism: Leveraging the 
Constitution to Rebuild America, early last year. With some success, it then worked to further the 
concept in specific states and policy contexts.” 
“On Medicaid in particular… the Liberty Foundation says it targeted 10 states and allied itself with 
state-partner think tanks in each of them. In six of these states, Medicaid expansion was rejected… In 
most of the 10 states and with/for its partners, the Liberty Foundation nimbly commission targeted 
survey research that was helpful in contributing to the discourse about expansion among the public 
and policymakers. This year, the Liberty Foundation wants to – arguably admirably, quite ambitiously 
– expand its efforts, on this issue and others… If awarded, by arrangement, this grant would again be 
matched anonymously by (the Allen Family Charitable Foundation). 
 

Pacific Research Institute (CA) 
 

2016: (Recommended) $75,000 to support the Center for Health Care and the work of a senior 
fellow.  This grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to PRI to $1,376,000. The fellow is 
Wayne Winegarden, a senior fellow in business and economics. The Center, led by Sally Pipes, is 
expected to continue its “fight” against the Affordable Care Act. Bradley calls PRI and CHC, along with 
[Benjamin Rush Institute] and Galen, “one of the most influential and effective voices in the fight 
against the burgeoning government monopoly over health care in the country.” 

 

7 

  

2015: $75,000, $50,000 to support the California Pension Reform Project and $25,000 to support the 
Health Care Communications Strategy. 
 

2014: $25,000 to support its Center for Health Care (CHC) in its public education efforts. Pipes 
focused on the following aspects of the ACA in 2014: 
 

• The 2.3% medical device tax 
• The health insurance tax 
• The Independent Payment Advisory Board (IPAB) 
• The 3.8% tax on unearned income 
• The excise tax on drug companies 

 
Pipes also prepared amicus briefs in many pending lawsuits.  

 
Pioneer Institute (MA) 
 

2014: $50,000 to support its distribution of its study on the impact of the Common Core State 
Standards. This is the first grant Bradley Foundation has made to the Pioneer Institute. 
“Faced with the prospect of the Common Core Initiative overwhelming its successful K 12 reform 
effort, the Pioneer Institute produced a series of white papers from 2010 13 in the US Department of 
Education’s promotion of the CCSSI. These papers found the following: that under the Common Core 
high performing states such as Massachusetts, California, Indiana, Georgia and New Hampshire would 
see a significant reduction in student exposure to classic works of literature, higher level math and 
history and civics courses; that under the Common Core the federal government was in violation of 
laws prohibiting the US Department of Education from directing K 12 curricula, curricular materials, 
and instructional practice in the states; and that under the Common Core some $16 billion in 
unfunded mandates will be placed on the states.” 
 

Pioneer planned to use the grant to publish its findings, authored by Peter Wood, President of the 
National Association of Scholars. “Pioneer will work with strategic partners such as Heritage, Cato, 
the American Principles Project and SPN and certain key attorneys general to provide testimony on 
the Core and to develop a public policy at the state level for the adoption of K 12 state curricular 
standards.”  
 

Sutherland Institute (UT) 

 
2015 (Barder Fund): $1.25 million to the American Conservative Union Foundation to work with 
Sutherland to create a “Family Prosperity Initiative (FPI).” “With FPI, they want to numerically and 
reliably measure the dynamic relationship between economic and social variables to show the impact 
of public politics on family health and translate that research into helpful analysis, resources, training, 
and support that grassroots groups and activists can use to try reversing the negative consequences 
of changing family structure.” An FPI index report was issued in Wisconsin, New Hampshire, Rhode 
Island and Utah.  
 

 

8 

 2014:  $15,000 to host the World Congress of Families.  Bradley also funded the Howard Center for 
Family, Religion and Society for this annual convention, which will take place in May 2017 in Tbilsi, 
Georgia under the theme “Civilization at the Crossroads: The Natural Family as the Bulwark of Human 
Values.” Bradley explains: “In the face of ever-increasing attacks by radical groups that seek to 
undermine the traditional family, especially in the West, the World Congress of Families represents a 
significant opportunity on an international scale to affirm the traditional family as the natural, 
fundamental and most sustainable unit of society” (HCFRS, Grant Proposal Record, 2016).  
 

Texas Public Policy Foundation (TX) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $75,000 to support the Center for Fiscal Policy (CFP). This grant would bring 
the total amount of Bradley funding to TPPF to $315,000. “One of nine TPPF policy centers, CFP 
covers issues surrounding the state budget and spending, taxes and fees, pensions, local governance, 
and transparency… TPPF’s CFP has demonstrated its ability to encourage meaningful change during 
the last Texas Legislative Session, and it has an experienced and widely respected fiscal policy team. 
In fact, its STR Fund sales tax reform measure, which would authorize the comptroller to lower the 
sales tax rate temporarily, was recently accepted by ALEC as model legislation.” 
 

Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy (VA) 

 
2015: $50,000 to support the State Energy Policy Summits. The Thomas Jefferson Institute has 
received a total of $150,000 from Bradley as of this grant. “In September TJI will hold a summit 
meeting prior to the SPN annual meeting in Grand Rapids. Attention will be focused on 
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) regulations and the free market case for offshore gas and oil 
exploration in Virginia, North and South Carolina, and Georgia. Discussion will also be entertained on 
issue of Keystone Pipeline in several Plain states.” 
 
2014: $50,000 to support its Leadership Roundtables on Energy & Environmental Stewardship. 
“Planned and put on in close cooperation with the Consumer Energy Alliance (CEA), the roundtables 
allow state think tanks to better promote free market energy and environmental policies… During the 
past three years, TJI has filled what it justifiably saw as an important, unfilled niche by convening and 
hosting energy roundtables twice a year – one before Brady-supported Heritage Foundation’s Annual 
Resource Bank meeting in Spring and another before the annual SPN meetings in the Fall – for 
conservative state think-tank leaders and policy analysts. At September’s SPN meeting, about 60 
people attended the roundtable.” 
 
2013: $50,000 in first-time support for its energy roundtables. 
 

Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty (WI) 

 
2015-2016: (Barder Fund): $1,155,355 over three years to create a “Center for Competitive 
Federalism” to work with others in Bradley’s Wisconsin Network, including WPRI, to cast federal 
programs as overly burdensome to the states. Excluding the Barder funding, WILL has received a total 
of $3,655,355 from the Bradley Foundation. (Source: 2015 Grant History document, 2015 Bradley IRS 
990). 
 
 

9 

 2015: $500,000 to support general operations. Bradley calls WILL its MVP of the Wisconsin Network. 
“Nearly all of the organizations of the conservative infrastructure come to WILL for advice… In the 
(four) years since its inception (WILL) had made itself the indispensable partner to nearly every 
member of the Wisconsin Network, and has been a voice in nearly every public controversy over 
property rights, free speech and limited government in Wisconsin…WILL has taken the lead in the 
fight against the Milwaukee Street Car, sued Milwaukee County Board for open meetings violations, 
sued against the Kenosha Unified School Board for violating Act 10, filed an amicus brief in 
McCutcheon v FEC, filed suit against the Government Accountability Board (GAB), partnered with the 
National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation to rebuff union challenges to Act 10 and 
represented a UWM student whose dissertation criticizing MPS was used to bar her graduation. WILL 
has worked with School Choice Wisconsin, Media Trackers, the MacIver Institute, American Majority 
and Education Action Group.” 
 
2014: $500,000 to support general operations. WILL “has grown from 2 to 5 attorneys plus an unpaid 
legal fellow, MU Law School approved WILL’s participation in its internship program…It is estimated 
that for the cost of $1.4 million roughly $4.3 million in legal services were provided.” 
 

Wisconsin Policy Research Institute (WI) 

 
2015: $375,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, WPRI has received a total of 
$13,055,000 from the Bradley Foundation. Bradley’s contribution is over half of WPRI’s 2015 
projected revenue of $644,000. The grant funds Mike Nichols, president of WPRI, a social media 
intern, and projects. “WPRI’s recent statewide polls on union and Right to Work again amplified by 
social media received a great deal of local, statewide, and national play due to its surprising 
revelations of the public’s views on those topics.” 
 
2014: $375,000 to support general operations and a proposal for “White Paper and Poll on Right to 
Work Issue.” Bradley gave WPRI its founding grant in 1987 (two grants totaling $2.4 million that year). 
New president Mike Nichols hoped to move WPRI into “more contemporary modes of 
communication and style.” They brought on an intern and researcher to work toward reaching out to 
younger audiences. In 2014, WPRI began a study of the impacts of potential tax structures in 
Wisconsin, as well as an analysis of the impact of the $6 billion in state funding spent on the UW 
system. WPRI questioned whether the UW system’s mission was aiding with “economic 
development.”  

 
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS 
 

Acton Institute (MI) 
 
2016: (Recommended) $150,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to the Acton Institute to $3,132,000. Bradley mentions Acton University, 
the research department, and the “Poverty Cure Initiative” as endeavors worth funding. 
 
2014: $125,000 to support general operations. Acton Institute events that stand out to Bradley: 
Acton University and its “Toward a Free and Virtuous Society.” 
 

10 

  

American Council of Trustees and Alumni (DC) 
2016 (recommended): $20,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to ACTA to $1,875,813. According to the Bradley grant proposal, ACTA 
mobilizes alumni and trustees “as a force for higher education reform… Its work product includes 
publications, conferences, and consulting activities. ACTA also commissions studies on critical issues… 
It maintains WhatWillTheyLearn online college guide website... For donors, ACTA stands ready to 
offer guidance on insuring that intent is respected, and it publishes The Intelligent Donors’ Guide to 
College Giving. For trustees, it holds training seminars on topics related to quality, affordability, and 
governance. ACTA also works to influence media coverage of educational issues… ACTA aims to 
create opportunities for returning higher education to its proper civic and intellectual purposes.” 
2015: $20,000 to support general operations. Bradley declined to fund ACTA’s Institute for Historical 
Literacy (IHL), “The IHL will conduct several surveys each year tracking changes in the knowledge of 
graduates. It will then encourage trustees at public universities and legislators to pursue resolutions 
supportive of US history graduation requirements… Declination of the IHL proposal component is 
recommended. In staff’s view, further surveying is not necessary to ascertain the absence of serious 
history education at the undergraduate level. Nor, will legislative resolutions necessarily or even 
probably lead to the desired result. 
2014: $25,000 to support general operations. According to the grant proposal, “ACTA collaborates 
with the State Policy Network, NAS, FIRE (Foundation for Individual Rights in Education), and other 
organizations.” 
 

American Enterprise Institute (DC) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $100,000 to support the Education Policy Studies (EPS) program. This grant 
would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to AEI to $21,792,797. “The larger, more informed 
conversation that AEI’s education program spurs about reform in America remains necessary—as is 
the growing ‘bench’ of conservative scholars, public policymakers, and entrepreneurial practitioners 
who can further the reforms that it helps develop and sustain.” EPS “helps further Bradley’s 
education reform grantmaking strategy—to help create and protect competitive K 12 education 
marketplaces that have a wide universe of options from which parents, in Milwaukee and the U.S., 
can choose schools in their own communities for their own children.” 
 
2015: $380,000 to support the Education Policy Studies program (EPS), the Foreign and Defense 
Policies Studies (FDPS), the work of Karlyn Bowman, and the Bradley Lecture Series.  AEI’s Foreign 
Defense Policy Studies (FDPS) was created in 1987 with Bradley funding, it investigates how “US 
interests can be protected and advanced” globally. “FDPS consists of four departments: Regional; 
Defense; Terrorism; and International Organization. It sustains the work of Gary Schmidt, Nicholas 
Eberstadt, Fred Kagan, John Bolton, Leon Aron, Sen. Jon Kyl, and others… Karlyn Brown analyzes 
public opinion; publishes AEI’s Political Report and Public Opinion Studies; collects data; is a weekly 
columnist for Forbes.com; and directs AEI’s Election Watch. Bowman also manages the Bradley 
lecture series.” 
 
2014: $300,000   $250,000 to support Foreign Defense Policy Studies (FDPS), $25,000 to support the 
 

11 

 work of Karlyn Bowman and $25,000 for the Bradley lectures.  
 
2013: $300,000   $250,000 support Foreign Defense Policy Studies (FDPS), $25,000 to support the 
work of Karlyn Brown and $25,000 for the Bradley Lectures.  
 

American Legislative Exchange Council (VA) 

 
2016: (Recommended): $200,000 to support a comprehensive communications infrastructure to help 
ALEC respond to the citizen campaigning that resulted in over a hundred corporations cutting ties 
with ALEC in recent years. If distributed, this grant will bring the total Bradley has contributed to ALEC 
up to $1,323,000. In addition to continuing to fund the activities described below in 2015, Bradley will 
be funding ALEC’s work on communications with CrowdSkout. “CrowdSkout allows ALEC to collect 
virtually all data points and contacts across every one of its websites and every social media 
interaction, however minimal, for analysis and potential future usage. The larger plan also has an 
important component for aggressive opposition research, which has yielded many beneficial 
outcomes—including to Strassel for her helpful book, among others.” 
 
2015: $350,000 to create a comprehensive communications infrastructure and to support the Center 
for State Fiscal Reform (CSFR). ALEC’s “beefed up” communications infrastructure would “redesign its 
website,” “deploy social media,” and “create more dynamic website and social media content.” This 
is a response to the “aggressive” left who attacked ALEC for its “effectiveness” with legislators. 
“Bradley helped create CSFR to better equip ALEC to fill a void in information and analysis for state 
legislators on a crucial set of policy issues. The Center for State Fiscal Reform provides state 
policymakers and groups across the country with fiscal analysis and research helpful in confronting 
current economic challenges, improving their state’s economic outlook, and stimulating job creation. 
Led by economist Jonathan Williams, the Center annually releases the publication Rich States, Poor 
States.” 
 
2014: $100,000 grant in support of the work of its Center for State Fiscal Reform. In 2014, the Center 
undertook expanded research and more publications, for example, it launched its first edition of “The 
State Tax Cut Roundup.” In 2015 the Center studied the relationship between state taxes and capital 
income, capital gains, dividends and estates, and charitable giving. Bradley notes that a case in New 
Jersey would be studied, looking at their “millionaires’ tax” to see if that tax decreases charitable 
giving.  
 
2013: $100,000 to support the Center for State Fiscal Reform. In 2014 ALEC’s Center for State Fiscal 
Reform built on research developed for Rich States, Poor States. The research agenda covered the 
following topics: “state solutions for government pension reform; a tax cronyism project and an 
updated state budget reform toolkit.”  
 

Americans for Prosperity Foundation (VA) 

 
2015: $275,000 to support two projects. The grant was used to support the Bridge to Wellbeing 
project and the Grassroots Leadership Academy (GLA). As of this grant, AFP received $1,305,000 from 
the Bradley Foundation, including $100,000 to open AFP’s first Wisconsin field office in 2005. The 
Bridge to Wellbeing spun off from AFP’s “Value Added Initiative” (see below). 
 

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2014: $100,000 to support the “Value Added Events Initiative.” “The Initiative is designed to contact 
people who have disengaged in terms of exercise of their citizenship. The project consists of putting 
on a series of community events in which one way or another emphasize the democratic principles 
and value with a special emphasis on the value of economic freedom. Target audiences include 
mothers, millennials individuals preparing to enter the workforce, small business owners and senior 
citizens. Programs and activities for each of those audiences will be tailored in such a fashion so as to 
equip members of those audiences with the tools they need to become more self sufficient, self 
reliant and free of government support programs.” 
 
The Initiative began in 2013. According to Bradley, AFP refined its target audience and goals based on 
focus group testing, polling and follow up surveys. In 2015 the Initiative primarily targeted women 
aged 33-55, a key voting demographic in the 2016 election. “Essentially, AFPF has gleaned from last 
year’s programs that women in this age group were most aligned with economic values most closely 
associated with its understanding of economic freedom… It is expected that the events for women, as 
well as millennials and seniors, will be held in Arizona, Michigan, Ohio, Texas and Virginia…One year 
ago, AFPF initiated a project to reach outside the already engaged base of active citizens by trying to 
identify and involve the ‘disengaged middle’ in the policy process. The first year’s work helped AFP 
refine both the formula it established to accomplish its purpose and the audiences it hoped to reach. 
Last year’s work told them what type of events worked and provided a clear outline of need for the 
next twelve months – women ages 33-55 and millennials.” 
 

Americans for Tax Reform Foundation (DC) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $125,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to ATR to $1,072,500 from the Bradley Foundation. “In 2016, ATRF will 
concentrate on building in numbers and quality the leadership of its national coalition.” Norquist also 
planned to host two “Coalition Leaders Retreats” for the first time in 2016. 
 
2015: $100,000 to support general operations. 
 
2014: $100,000 to support general operations. 
 

America’s Future Foundation (DC) 

 
2015: $20,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, AFF has received $40,000 from the 
Bradley Foundation. “AFF provides networking and professional development opportunities for 
young conservatives and libertarians… In 2016, Milwaukee will be the site of yet another of its many 
chapters.” 
 
2014: $10,000 grant to support general operations. “Last year it hosted a total 104 programs… usually 
during ‘happy hour’ – for chapters in 14 cities that collectively reached more than 8,000 attendees. It 
is working on starting a chapter in Milwaukee.” Executive Director Roger Custer came to AFF from the 
Young America’s Foundation.  
 
 
 

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 Association of American Educators Foundation (VA) 
2014 - $200,000 to support program activities in Wisconsin. As of this grant AAEF has received 
$1,770,000 from the Bradley Foundation. According to the grant proposal document, “The 
Association of American Educators (AAE) is the largest non-union educators’ organization in the 
country… The AAE alternative has become more attractive, given the escalation of NEA and AFT union 
dues over the past eight years. Typical union dues range between $700 to $1,000 per year. The two 
unions annually collect a total of approximately $1.3 billion in dues and agency fees. For every 
individual member AAE gains, the NEA and AFT lose some $600… In contrast to the NEA and AFT, 
however, AAE does not take positions on political issues and it does not fund other organizations that 
take, and act on, political positions. With previous Bradley support, AAE hired a Wisconsin executive 
director, Kristi Lacroix, a former teacher… After she stood up for Wisconsin’s Act 10, her teacher job 
was threatened through an online movement.” 
“Lacroix and AAE currently have only a disappointingly-low 512 members in the state, though they 
say they are on track to meet its goal of 1,000 by the end of the year. With the final legality of Act 10 
contemplated later this year, AAE hopes its 2014-15 recruiting season could be a tipping point for its 
growth in Wisconsin. The NEA and AFT have already been substantially weakened in Wisconsin by Act 
10. AAE thinks its well-positioned to help further weaken the unions, and their political goals. AAE 
members or allies have cooperated with, including helping to provide actual clients for the Bradleysupported Wisconsin Institute for Law Liberty, in its work on Act 10 and related cases… AAE and 
Lacroix have admirably struggled, in the face of severe challenges, to increase that number and 
decrease the unions’ hold on teachers’ money, and thus their power.” 

Atlas Network (DC) 
 
2015: $25,000 to support the Mont Pelerin Society (MPS). As of this grant, Atlas has received 
$130,000 from the Bradley Foundation. The grant was used by Atlas to host the MPS conference in 
2016. 
 

Benjamin Rush Institute (CA) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $35,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to BRI to $105,000. BRI is modeled, “like several other Bradley supported 
organizations,” after the Federalist Society “which cooperated with (Sally) Pipes during its creation. 
BRI is generally seeking to do for medical students, medical school faculty members and practicing 
doctors that which the Federalist Society has done for law students.”  Bradley notes that BRI is well 
poised to join other Bradley supported groups “as one of the most influential and effective voices in 
the fight against the burgeoning government monopoly over health care in the country.” Its two 
major programs are its Lecture Series and Debate Series hosted on medical school campuses. 
 
2015: $30,000 to support general operations. The grant supported work to bring an “intellectual 
revolution” to medical school campuses across the nation and to get future practitioners involved in 
policy debates. 
 
2014: $40,000 to support general operations. In 2014, BRI was in the process of adding 9 campuses to 
its already 18. 
 

14 

  

Capital Research Center (DC) 
2016: $115,000 to create an “Online Encyclopedia of the Left.” This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to CRC to $2,543,320. According to the grant proposal, “Under (new 
president Scott) Walter’s direction, CRC is developing a new signature project: an online encyclopedia 
of the Left. This will be a comprehensive, wiki-style resource that provides in-depth profiles of left-ofcenter individuals and organizations based on the model of the Center for Media and Democracy’s 
website SourceWatch.org… Due to its highly effective search-engine optimization, SourceWatch’s 
unflattering portraits of conservative groups and individuals are more likely to be chosen by online 
researchers using websites like Google. SourceWatch boasts over six million new viewers each year, 
allowing it to play an influential role in negatively branding center-right organizations and individuals. 
CRC plans to take a page out of SourceWatch’s play book by ensuring that its new, wiki-style 
encyclopedia of the Left is thorough, regularly updated, and written in a manner that’s accurate and 
measured in order to attract and retain a large audience.”  
“The website will be constructed in partnership with Berman and Company, and CRC is collaborating 
with the American Legislative Exchange Council and the Heartland Institute to make use of their data 
as it builds the new website’s profile list. In addition, CRC will grant wiki-editing privileges to a variety 
of conservative think tanks, and it plans to offer them incentives in the form of micro-grants to help 
build and maintain its database. These externally sourced contributions will be reviewed and revised 
as necessary by CRC’s editorial staff to ensure the quality of the website’s content. The website will 
also include subsections designed to highlight the activities of specific clusters of organizations such 
as anti-ALEC groups and those associated with Democracy Alliance… SourceWatch is a widely-used 
resource that significantly influences public opinion regarding the activities of center-right groups and 
individuals. While there are a number of conservative resources that profile organizations and 
individuals of the Left… CRD will build upon and compliment their efforts, adding value through its 
more comprehensive coverage, superior search engine optimization, and wiki-style format. With 
CRC’s renewed vigor under the leadership of its new president, as well as its 30 years of experience 
tracking the activities of groups and individuals on the Left, CRC is poised to succeed with this 
ambitious project” 
2015: $150,000 to support general operations ($85,000), a communications upgrade ($25,000) and 
Philanthropy Daily ($40,000). According to the grant proposal, “CRC publishes four monthly 
newsletters – Foundation Watch, Organization Trends, Labor Watch, and Green Watch… They would 
also like to completely upgrade CRC’s basic donor and communications database software to 
maximize its technical capacity to raise funds, market itself and streamline its administration of 
development and accounting. It is actively comparing possible replacement systems to identify which 
one would best increase its capacity to produce in-house mass email communications to donors and 
journalists, track existing donors, upgrade its online giving portal, and prospect for new donors and 
media contacts… As well, CRC floats the idea of trying to offer training and follow-up research and 
publication assistance to as many as five state think tanks, so they can dissect the leading donors and 
pressure groups behind their own respective states’ left-wing networks (and perform ‘reverse 
opposition research’ on themselves, which can be helpful). The idea’s principle component seems to 
be allowing the think tanks to use CRC’s costly access to Guidestar, FoundationSearch and LexisNexis. 
It would also include helping them to interpret IRS Form 990s… The increasingly influential impact of 
organizations supported by tax-exempt charitable donations is worthy of more attention. CRC pays 
 

15 

 this attention, and works hard to get others to do so, too… At this time, staff recommends declining 
to separately support CRC’s proposed training of state think tanks in ‘opposition research.’ 
Bradley’s(sic) is already substantially investing in projects with similar components done by others 
elsewhere – most prominently including North Carolina’s model ‘Mapping the Left’ effort, which will 
likely be easily replicable, and the Interstate Policy Alliance. 
“At Bradley’s behest, Walter and CRC are currently helping to manage a review of the nature and 
quality of eight selected conservative state infrastructures by Mike Saltsman and Sarah Longwell of 
the Employment Policies Institute Foundation’s Interstate Policy Alliance to better inform Barder 
(Fund) investments in the area. For several years CRC has also been the (c)(3) supporter of 
Philanthropy Daily... (it) features original content from its editorial staff and contributors, who include 
CRC’s Walter, and offers a selective and intelligent aggregation service that collects on a daily basis 
the best of what is being thought, written, and said about the charitable sector.” 
2015 (Barder Fund): $25,000 for a report on conservative state infrastructures. “(Bradley) Staff has 
conducted an internal evaluation of the quality and promise of states’ existing infrastructures to 
better inform its grantmaking in the area moving forward – concluding that eight states warrant 
further, more in-depth review. Staff thus recommends a separate, $25,000 grant to the Capital 
Research Center for a report on any potential grantmaking opportunities in these states by the 
executive director of the Interstate Policy Alliance.” 
2014: $85,000 to support general operations. “This year, CRC will also release a newly updated and 
expanded addition of The Great Philanthropists and the Problem of ‘Donor Intent’, by conservative 
writer Martin Moorse Wooster, and a new version of Classical Education: The Movement Sweeping 
America, by CiRCE Institute president Andrew Kern. 
 

Cato Institute (DC) 

 
2015: $325,000 to support the Center for Monetary and Financial Alternatives and to support a 
religious freedom conference. Bradley funds helped launch the Center, as of this grant Cato has 
received $2,547,500 from the Bradley Foundation. “Over the past several years the Federal Reserve’s 
unchecked expansion has advanced unwise monetary and regulatory policies that pose a significant 
threat to the long term economic well being of the United States. Cato’s Center for Monetary and 
Financial Alternatives has launched an intellectual and practical policy roadmap for the creation of a 
free market monetary and financial system.” 
 
On the conference: “Cato would like to hold a half day conference on religious freedom, as the first 
steps toward other, larger efforts. It would feature three panels—one on religious freedom and 
toleration as a defining quality of the American experience, a second on religious freedom as a 
constant battleground in the context of school choice in particular, and a third on the social and 
political frictions that inevitably arise when compulsory public accommodation laws are hoisted onto 
the religiously observant.” 
 
2014: $250,000 to support the establishment of the Center for Monetary and Financial Studies. “On 
the advent of the 100th  anniversary of the Federal Reserve the Cato Institute proposes to launch a 
Center for Monetary and Fiscal Studies. In this Initiative Cato hopes to accomplish the following: 
create an integrated network of scholars who support a market based monetary and fiscal regime; 
 

16 

 develop a coordinated effort to evaluate and communicate the Federal Reserve’s performance 
relative to free market alternatives to fiat money and heavily regulated financials systems; and use 
research, publications and electronic media to persuade opinion leaders that there are serious risks 
currently in the way we do our central banking and regulate financial markets; partner with the 
Economics Department of George Mason University to develop future PHDs who understand and 
advocate a free market monetary system; develop a formal transition plan to move from a 
government controlled central banking; and financial system to a free market system.”  
 

Centennial Institute (CO) 

 
2016 (Barder Fund Recommended): $75,000 for the Institute’s Western Conservative Summit.” This 
grant would bring the total amount of funding to the Centennial Institute to $175,000. The summit 
includes Citizen Action Workshops and cover topics ranging from national defense, the threat of ISIS, 
immigration, economic freedom, cultural reform, education reform, and life and marriage issues, 
among others. 
2015 (to Colorado Christian University): $50,000 for Centennial’s 2015 Western Conservative 
Summit. 
 
2014 (to Colorado Christian University): $50,000 for Centennial’s 2014 Western Conservative 
Summit. 
 

Center for Competitive Politics (VA) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $125,000 to support general operations (litigation, research and public 
education activities). This grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to CCP to $640,000. 
The grant will be used by CCP to fight those calling for greater disclosure rules “to chill speech,” part 
of a national effort to allow campaign finance donors to hide their identities. 
 
2015: $100,000 to support general operations. 
 
2014: $75,000 to support general operations. Key factors in CCP’s selection of cases, in addition to 
the existence of a favorable plaintiff, are as follows: “the probabilities of winning and anticipated cost 
and resource allocation; the impact of victory on the legal landscape and campaign finance law 
generally; opportunities to publicize favorably deregulation through litigation; and the potential of a 
favorable decision to impact positively legislature incentives to deregulate… Litigation in 2014 and 
beyond focuses on draconian disclosure laws to harass groups through the reporting process 
resulting from the Citizens United decision. Recent enactment of disclosure laws in Delaware and 
Utah present strong vehicles for constitutional challenges. CCP will also be studying options to seek 
judicial review of current IRS practices regarding political activity by nonprofits… CCP increased 
attention to the increasingly worrisome donor disclosure legislative initiatives across the country 
especially aimed at non profits, will be at most a timely and valuable contribution to ensuring the 
protection of free speech.” 
 

Center for Education Reform (DC) 

 
2015: $30,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, CER has received $1,101,860 from the 
 

17 

 Bradley Foundation. “It is most likely that CER’s most significant contribution will be in counseling 
charter school advocates in key states on what works in terms of policy change to expand the number 
of charter school in key states on what works in terms of policy change to expand the number of 
charter schools throughout the country and how to manage regulatory problems in the case of start 
ups.” 
 
2014: $20,000 to support general operations. Bradley notes CER’s two priorities in 2015: Advocate 
effectively and support the enactment of new choices in education, and develop and engage new 
participants and leaders in the movement. “To that end CER will organize state level institutes to 
educate local stakeholders on how best to bring successful charter school models to 
scale, build strategic alliances with like minded organizations, policymakers and the media in targeted 
states to secure choice expanding policy objectives and work to ensure that growth of school choice 
and charters reach middle class and rural families. CER will also increase the distribution and use of its 
e properties including the Parent Power Index, Education Reform University, Educational Fifty and the 
Media Bullpen.”  
 

Competitive Enterprise Institute (DC) 

 
2015: $200,000 to support general operations and litigation. Emphasis of work will be on energy and 
the environment. As of this grant, CEI has received $2,130,040 from the Bradley Foundation. CEI’s 
Center for Energy and the Environment is “working closely with Bradley supported conservative think 
tanks and the Bradley supported American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) on public education 
about energy and the environment.” CEI’s “work on energy and the environment in particular is 
helping to expose and cut back onerous federal regulations that choke economic growth and 
prosperity.” CEI’s litigation agenda “includes a reinvigorated challenge to Dodd Frank Wall Street 
Reform and Consumer Protection Act and other cases in areas ranging from government 
transparency to climate science.” 
 
2014: $150,000 to support general operations and litigation. The grant request notes that the support 
of general operations is “with an emphasis on its work on energy and environment. This grant is 
separate and apart from that for CEI’s litigation efforts… Among other things, (CEI’s) Center for 
Energy and Environment is also working closely with Bradley supported conservative state think tanks 
and the Bradley supported American Legislative Exchange Council on public education about the 
likely economic and other effects of the proposed XL pipeline and the repeal of renewable energy 
standards in Kansas, Ohio and North Carolina. It aggressively used the Freedom of Information Act 
process to expose the collusion between officials of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and 
green and global warming alarmist groups. As well, including their attempt to rely on the federal 
Endangered Species Act to stymie energy development.” CEI’s litigation program included challenges 
to Dodd Frank, the CPA and the Affordable Care Act, which Bradley called "ambitiously creative.” 
 
2013: $200,000 to support general operations and Dodd Frank Litigation. “In 2014 CEI will expand its 
reach in the areas of energy, environment, labor and finance.” CEI was working to “expose” President 
Obama’s “war on coal” and efforts to build a carbon tax. CEI also focused on public sector collective 
bargaining and its Center for Advancing Capitalism advocates for economic policies “compatible” with 
“liberty, security and fairness…A moral case for capitalism will be promoted through the Center’s 
narrative on the relationship between labor and finance.” CEI filed a challenge to Dodd Frank in 2012 
 

18 

 with the 60 Plus Association and State National Bank of Big Spring, Texas. CEI wants to expand its 
Strategic Litigation Program, currently (2013) it supports 6 businesses and individuals who have 
challenged the ACA’s mandate and it uses FOIA’s to “expose” the EPA, and has other local and state 
court suits related to global warming. The two year budget for the Dodd Frank litigation was $2.5 
million, most of which spent on the retained outside counsel. 
 

Donors Trust (VA) 

 
As of 2015, the Bradley Foundation has funneled $3,199,292 to various organizations through Donors 
Trust, a donor advised fund that adds an extra layer of anonymity in order to conceal the true source 
of funding. 
 
2015: $30,000 to support the general operations of Talent Market. Talent Market matches 
individuals with right wing nonprofits. “Talent Market is a wholly owned entity of DonorsTrust and is 
funded solely through direct contributions from individuals, organizations, foundations, and 
corporations…In a space of five years’ time it has provided free market nonprofits with information, 
personnel, and training expertise at no charge, all in an effort to develop a critical mass of well staffed 
and well run free market organizations available to engage in the public debate of ideas and 
formation of public policies that once enacted can sustain and nurture America’s fundamental 
principles and values.” 
 
2015: $100,000 to support Philanthropy Roundtable’s Independence Project. The Independence 
Project is a new endeavor of the Philanthropy Roundtable “to challenge the Veterans public 
bureaucracy by testing new flexible private alternatives.” 
 
2014: $100,000 to support the Project on Fair Representation (PFR), “which requests an unspecified 
amount to finance at least three class action lawsuits challenging affirmative action policies at highly 
competitive public and private colleges and universities, perhaps including the University of 
Wisconsin.” PFR’s predecessor was the Campaign for Color Blind America (CCBA). Bradley supported 
PFR with a grant of $100,000 in 2012 for Fisher v UT and Shelby County v. Holder. PFR was seeking 
help from attorneys at DC’s Wiley Rein law firm to identify more opportunities to strike down 
affirmative action. Bradley noted in 2014 that three likely targets were UW Madison, UNC Chapel Hill 
and Harvard. PFR noted a desire to file the suits within weeks or day of each other, aiming for the 
Spring of 2015. PFR has raised $1.5 million from the Searle Freedom Trust. 
 
2013: $20,000 to support a project in Pennsylvania by the Commonwealth Foundation, American 
Majority and Media Trackers. The three groups worked together to create a permanent Pennsylvania 
infrastructure that mimics Wisconsin’s, “Bradley already supports both American Majority’s and 
Media Trackers’ work in Wisconsin. Commonwealth is a member of the Bradley supported Interstate 
Policy Alliance (IPA) and State Policy Network (SPN).” 
 
Their first collective project was “educating” legislators on the effect of government unions on public 
policy and economic growth. “The context for this project includes the fact that reforms that might 
be proposed by Gov. Tom Corbett later this year or early next to alter the way in which government 
unions in state collect dues and PAC contributions from their members through automatic 
withholding… To the effort, according to the organizations’ jointly submitted request, Commonwealth 
 

19 

 brings ‘intellectual ammunition,’ American Majority brings candidate recruitment and training and 
Media Trackers brings ‘opposition research.’ Other organizations, including some 501(c)(3) groups, 
are also part of the effort. SPN is offering public relations support for the project as part of its larger 
campaign to better ‘brand’ freedom.” The overall budget for the larger infrastructure project was 
$5.3 million, of which $3 million was raised by in state donors. Bradley recommended the $20,000 
“to supplement already existing, albeit indirect support of Commonwealth through IPA and SPN… 
Given Commonwealth’s history, the potential national importance of Pennsylvania as a place for 
policy to pivot and the groups’ desire to learn from the experience of those who helped further 
reform in Wisconsin.” 
 

Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies (DC) 

2016 (recommended): $325,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to the Federalist Society to $7,555,000. According to the grant proposal, 
“Its new State Attorneys General Project complementarily sponsors online publications, events, and 
online programs to explore the role of state attorneys general and promoting discussion about their 
proper roles with respect to subject areas like consumer protect and public safety. And its even 
newer Executive Branch Review Project tracks and conducts public education about the current 
federal Administration’s (Obama) use of executive orders and regulations to implement its policy 
preferences when they are politically untenable to Congress.” 
“The Federalist Society retains CRC Public Relations… that assists many of its best professors, lawyers, 
and friendly public-policy experts in media training and placement. With help from CRC and building 
upon what it justifiably sees as the success its State Supreme Courts project’s selective placement of 
role of top state courts in the public discourse, the Society’s new SCOTUS Project is seeking to place 
the role of the Supreme Court of the United States closer to the center of discussions and debates. 
Last year, in addition to its Article I Project, the Society also started a Law and Innovation Project – 
which is examining over-regulation of the economy and the effects that over-regulation has on 
innovation, productivity, and ultimately the American Dream… As recognized by its founders’ receipt 
of the Bradley Prize, the Federalist Society has successfully changed the legal culture in America.” 
2015: $325,000 to support general operations.  
2014: $325,000 to support general operations and the SCOTUS Project. According to the grant 
proposal, the SCOTUS Project, “with help from CRC will: Determine how to communicate with the 
public about the court; Establish a dedicated communications infrastructure to do so; Credential and 
deploy the infrastructure; and Leverage and create ‘media inflection points.’ The Supreme Court 
hangs in the balance by one vote on nearly every major issue of economic, social, and political 
importance, and the next president will almost certainly have a rare and unique opportunity to 
determine this balance for decades to come. While many have wanted to role of the Court to be a big 
issue during presidential campaigns, it has rarely, if ever, been one. The Society may have a better 
chance than some if these others to make it.” 
 

Foundation for Economic Education (GA) 

 
2015: $40,000 to support general operations. This is the Bradley Foundation’s first grant to this 
organization. Interestingly, Bradley declined requests for funding from this group 13 times previously 
 

20 

 and decided to give the organization this time around because they are engaging better with youths. 
 

Foundation for Excellence in Education (FL) 

 
2015: $35,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, FEE has received a total of $470,000 
from the Bradley Foundation. “FEE is an excellent connection point for Bradley with respect to 
organizations working on reform and funding partners dedicated to the changing way K 12 education 
is delivered, increasing parent involvement, and attaining higher levels of student achievement in the 
classroom.” 
 
2014: $25,000 to support “Digital Learning Now!” Bradley describes some of the measures Jeb Bush, 
FEE founder and chairman, implemented as Governor of Florida, “many ideas fostered and furthered 
by Bradley and its grantees and allies.” This includes: “vouchers; charter schools; corporate tax 
credits; ‘disruptively innovative technological advances in the online delivery of education’; data 
driven accountability measures; and taking on teachers’ unions if and when necessary (so, often).” 
Bush has supported and defended Common Core. “FEE and Bush have been respectful of Bradley, 
including by soliciting its input on education reform measures generally and how he and it can best 
foment support of them elsewhere specifically.” Digital Learning Now! is FEE’s campaign to advance 
“digital learning”, it has developed an A F scale for how states meet 72 metrics that measure the 
digital transformation of education. “Some of its officials have helped Bradley in surveying the digital 
learning policy landscape.” Chiefs for Change is a coalition of 8 state school chiefs and leaders who 
are sympathetic to education reform. “The Bradley supported State Human Services Secretaries’ 
Innovation Group and Center for Energy Innovation and Independence group of state attorneys 
general are both modeled on Chief for Change.”  
 

Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity (VA) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $90,000 to support Wisconsin Watchdog. With this grant, the Franklin Center 
will have received $885,500 from the Bradley Foundation. “… Because Wisconsin Watchdog is so 
effective and such a valuable partner in the state’s conservative infrastructure, staff believes it is 
worthwhile to support the local office, even as it watches the national office closely, and with some 
skepticism. With luck, Wisconsin might be a model for the organization’s future.” 
 
2015: $140,000 to support the Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellowship at National Review and to 
support Wisconsin Watchdog. With Bradley funding in 2011, the National Review created an 
investigative journalism fellowship to honor Dusty Rhodes. The fellowship is available to a young 
journalist who has shown expertise in writing on economic policy. The recipient is chosen by the 
editors of National Review and writes for the magazine and website. The Rhodes Fellowship, based 
off of the National Review’s William F. Buckley Fellowship in political journalism, also contributes to 
Watchdog. This grant will support Jill Melchior to stay on as a Rhodes Fellow for a second year. The 
grant for Wisconsin Watchdog will support reporting. 
 
2014: $125,000 to support the Wisconsin Reporter and the Thomas L. Rhodes Journalism Fellowship 
at National Review. Wisconsin Reporter, now “Wisconsin Watchdog”, is a Madison based media site 
specializing in state and local government. “Franklin Center nationally has focuses on penetrating 
small and medium sized media markets with an emphasis on local stories that have national 
 

21 

 implications… Wisconsin Reporter has become the leading news outlet for coverage of Wisconsin’s 
John Doe investigations. With close ties to insiders in the Doe, and a knack for covering the key 
elements of the story that had been missed elsewhere in the media, the 90 plus [now 386] Doe 
stories...” 
 
Wisconsin Reporter proposed a reporting position dedicated to Milwaukee education, based off of 
Franklin’s Philadelphia model. “Since Wisconsin is a leader in education reform, its stories have the 
potential to affect national understanding of education problems and reform options… Since the 
Foundation stopped funding for this project in 2013, new leadership has dramatically shifted the 
quality and focus of WR’s reporting. A series of conversations with the new national Director of 
Journalism at Franklin Center has restored staff confidence in the capabilities and prospects for 
Wisconsin Reporter, and the past year’s news stories have earned new respect for the organization.”  
 

Free to Choose Network (PA) 

 
2015: $100,000 to support The Power to be Free media project. As of this grant, FTCN has received 
$357,000 from the Bradley Foundation. “This project considers the role of the military in a free 
society.” 
 

FreedomWorks Foundation (DC) 

 
2015: $50,000 to support public education about the administrative state and regulations. As of this 
grant, FreedomWorks has received $790,000 from the Bradley Foundation. Bradley staff 
recommended $50,000 in 2015 for its SWAT (Stop Washington’s Abuse of Taxpayers) project. It’s 
“Action Center will mobilize thousands of grassroots activists to become aware of and fight the 
administrative state. It will use the advanced technology with which it is already so familiar in ‘real 
time,’ encouraging the filing of comments online with agencies if and when warranted.” 
 
2013: $100,000 (Recommended) to support general operations. “Bradley has provided support for 
FreedomWorks’ program activities since 2004. It has done so valuing the strength of its work in 
organizing a network of grassroots volunteers to take a leading role in the public debates on 
economic policy and the role of government in a free society. With others, FreedomWorks has 
effectively nurtured the Tea Party movement.” 
 
“FreedomWorks has recruited a massive network of activists online – including, it says, 3.5 million 
Facebook fans, 1.4 million e-mail subscribers, 488,000 uniqure website visitors each month, more 
that 78,000 Twitter followers, and an allied network of hundreds of bloggers.”  
 

Friedman Foundation for Educational Choice (renamed EdChoice) (IN) 

 
2015: $15,000 to support the Parent Organizer Media Training program. As of this grant, EdChoice 
has received $61,250 from the Bradley Foundation. Training sessions bring together leaders from 
school reform organizations across the country. It focuses on “what works for organizing low income 
parents, how to start grassroots campaigns, how to get the most out of social media, and how to 
develop diversity amongst advocates.” 
 
 

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 Fund for American Studies (DC) 
 
2015: $80,000 to support academic programs and journalism fellowships at the Institute on Political 
Journalism (IPJ), the Legal Studies Institute (LSI), and the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship 
Program. As of this grant FAS has received a total of $1,475,000 from the Bradley Foundation. “The 
two institutes are accredited by George Mason and collectively serve more than 200 students each 
year… IPJ is conducted as both a semester long and summer institute, it includes classroom work, 
lectures and internships at media organizations... LSI is a summer course on the Founding for first and 
second year law students.” Content for the course is arranged by the Federalist Society as well as 
guest lecturers and panels. “Its Board of Visitors, including Ed Meese, assists students secure 
positions with law firms, courts and nonprofits.” 
 
2014: $80,000   $40,000 to support the Institute on Political Journalism (IPJ) and the Legal Studies 
Institute (LSI) and $40,000 for the Robert Novak Journalism Fellowship Program (JFP).  
 

Galen Institute (VA) 
 

2016: (Recommended) $150,000 to support a fellowship for Dr. Davis and a special project. This 
grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to Galen to $1,115,000. “The Galen Institute 
proposes to undertake a special project in which it would undertake a study of a few specially 
identified top medical practices to gather data and develop policy and regulatory changes that will 
be needed for private practices to survive going forward. In collaboration with, and under the 
supervision of, Grace Marie Turner, Galen would bring on a practicing physician to help develop data 
from private practices, document the problems the Affordable Care Act causes for them, and work 
with Grace Marie to write and publish policy papers which would serve as road map for policy 
makers and opinion leaders on the policy changes necessary to save private, independent 
practitioners. Galen has identified Dr. William Davis to be Galen’s visiting fellow for this project.” 
 
2015: $150,000 to support general operations. Galen will meet “with Members of Congress and 
their staffs to develop reform ideas and testify at committee hearings about the law’s changes and 
impact. In partnership with State Policy Network and the Institute for Policy Innovation Galen will 
meet with Governors and state policy decision makers.” Galen also runs and maintains 
ObamaCareWatch.org. 
 
2014: $150,000 to support general operations. “Grace Marie and her colleagues have also been 
working hard to help explain to governors across the country to resist expanding Medicaid 
programs. Galen has helped them by outlining ideas and strategies to transform their Medicaid 
programs around the principles of competition and choice.” 
 
“Galen’s reconfigured website should be of considerable help in its difficult task of building and 
holding a consensus amongst policy makers and the citizenry to modify ObamaCare and eventually 
bring about its repeal.” 

 
 
 
 

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 Heritage Foundation (DC) 
 
2016: (Recommended) $80,000 to support the George C. Marshall Fellows Program. This grant would 
bring the total amount of Bradley funding to Heritage to $16,509,702. Funds 15 20 individuals for 
training for leadership positions in the defense and foreign policy establishments. The program, 
created in 2011, “prepares a carefully selected group of 14 18 young legislative aides and other 
professionals for careers in leadership positions within security and foreign policy establishments.” 
The program includes: “an active schedule of lectures by distinguished experts on international 
relations, military history and military affairs; interactions between Fellows and those who serve in 
the military; and visits to the Gettysburg battlefield, the Army War College, the Marine Corps 
University and West Point.” 
 
2015: $130,000 to support the American Perceptions Initiative and the George C. Marshall Fellows 
Program. The “Marshall Fellows program each year prepares a carefully selected group of 14 28 
young legislative aides and other professionals for careers in leadership positions within the security 
and foreign policy establishments… The American Perceptions Initiative is using a broad spectrum of 
communications media to present the messages favored by the Initiative.” They include: The Daily 
Signal, Facebook and Twitter, news articles, op eds, and interviews by Heritage employees. 
 
2014: $130,000 in support of its American Perceptions Initiative and the George C. Marshall Fellows 
Program. Over the past year (2013 2014) the Initiative created two new brands: “America Within” 
which uses “visually striking ads and emotionally charged stories… without the conservative label.” 
“America Within creates a blind taste test for conservative policies. (It’s) the result of a collaboration 
between Heritage, Dick Newman and the Butin Group.” The second brand is the multimedia news site 
“The Daily Signal.” The two main policy issues of the Initiative are Amnesty, immigration, border 
security and the Affordable Care Act.  
 
2013: $100,000 to support the George C. Marshall Fellows Program. 
 

Independent Women’s Forum (DC) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $200,000 to support the Working Women Message Kit Project. This grant 
would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to IWF to $1,095,000. These communication tool 
kits will be distributed to women in “key networks” like SPN, ALEC, Atlas, Heritage, and others. What 
it calls “educational materials—talking points, visual, and easy to understand supporting data and 
facts—will be disseminated to women conservatives across the country. Tool kits will be created for 
these issue areas: economic opportunity for all women (alternative to the minimum wage, 
deregulation, job creation); workplace flexibility (reforming labor laws such as Fair Labor Standard 
Act); personal care—paid leave—savings accounts (alternative to paid leave mandate or entitlement); 
child center tax relief (alternative to government daycare subsidies); equal pay for equal work 
(alternative to Paycheck Fairness Act and government Standardization of Compensation); 
affordability and control (tax reform and spending reform to return resources to women and families 
rather than more government waste.)” 
 
2015: $225,000 to support Working for Women Policy Project and general operations. “IWF’s 
Working for Women’s Policy Project will organize a high profile working group of economists and 
 

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 policy analysts to develop specific policy proposals on key issues that appeal to America women.” The 
Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel is listed as a likely leader of the project. 
 
2014: $50,000 to support general operations. In 2014 IWF’s top priorities were healthcare, 
“educating” the public on the ACA and combatting notion that women benefit from more 
government spending; economic opportunity, educating women on how government policies 
“impede economic opportunity” with an emphasis on tax and regulation; budget issues; and energy, 
“focusing on alerting women to the fact that sound science does not support the alarmist predictions 
on energy and environment.”  
 

Institute for Humane Studies (VA) 

 
2015: $30,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, IHS has received $425,000 from the 
Bradley Foundation.  “Humane Studies joins with the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Institute for 
Responsible Citizenship, and Fund for American Studies to compensate for the widespread neglect of 
higher education to fulfill its mission. The role it plays in nurturing the intellectual talent was noted by 
Professor Bradley Smith when he received a 2010 Bradley Prize; in his remarks, he observed: ‘Special 
thanks must go to IHS, which helped to finance my legal education and without whose 
encouragement I would probably not have entered academia.’” 
 
2014: $30,000 to support general operations. “Several years ago, IHS undertook focused efforts to 
help those of its alumni with PHDs secure academic positions. Building on its successes in doing so, it 
soon thereafter launched the Find Scholars project specifically to create a community of its 10,000 
affiliated faculty members and other interested parties.” Find Scholars sponsors networking events, 
provides lists of scholars to donors interested in funding programs, using PR capacity to publish and 
promote scholars work and referring policy scholars to lawmakers seeking testimony.  
 
2013: $25,000 to support general operations. 
 

Institute for Justice (VA) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $200,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to $4,335,000. The Institute for Justice litigates First Amendment, private 
property, and economic liberty case in courts across the country. “IJ tells stories to judges and justices 
in court and in the court of public opinion—strategically combining legal, public relations, and 
grassroots strategies.” 
 
2015: $200,000 to support general operations. 
 
2014: $175,000 to support general operations. “IJ helped formulate and successfully implement the 
legal strategy that upheld the constitutionality of school choice, culminating in victories first at 
Wisconsin’s State Supreme Court and then at the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002.” It has also defended 
school voucher programs in Indiana (“what may become the largest school choice program in the 
country”), Alabama, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Douglas County Colorado, and intervenor in the 
first education savings account program in Arizona. IJ won a case in 2013 when a state court struck 
down Milwaukee’s cap on taxicab permits. It is representing a coalition of drivers working for Uber 
 

25 

 and Lyft. 
 

Institute for Truth in Accounting (now Truth in Accounting) (IL) 
 
2016: (Recommended) $75,000 to support the State Data Lab (SDL). This would be the Bradley 
Foundation’s first grant to TIA. “SDL would like to further improve and expand its content and 
capabilities. SDL is currently working with universities and bond analysts to create a customized 
subscription model for its data download section, including better data manipulation and 
visualization capabilities.” Bradley notes that the grant will complement “work on state policy and 
conservative state infrastructure.” 
 

Intellectual Takeout (MN) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $20,000 to support general operations. This would be the Bradley 
Foundation’s first grant to ITO.  “At a time when there is growing hostility to the Western canon in 
academia, ITO’s fresh and effective approach to making classic texts relevant in contemporary 
political life is sorely needed.” 
 

John William Pope Center for Higher Education Policy, Now the James G. Martin 
Center for Academic Renewal (NC) 

 
2014: $29,000 to support a report on academic freedom. As of this grant, the Center received 
$59,000 from the Bradley Foundation. The report was a six month project titled Academic Freedom: 
A New Look at an Evolving Issue, building on a paper the Center published in 2009 by UW Madison 
professor and Bradley associate Donald Downs outlining the history of academic freedom in the US 
and recent court cases. Bradley considered the topic of academic freedom to be overlooked and 
understudied. 
 

Lucy Burns Institute (WI) 

 
2015: $15,000 to support the Wisconsin School Board Elections Project complementing American 
Majority’s effort to swing school board elections in Wisconsin. As of this grant, LBI has received 
$25,400 from the Bradley Foundation. “LBI plans to expand coverage of the Wisconsin school districts 
to be accessible to citizens for the 2015 elections.” 
 
2014: $10,400 to support the Wisconsin School Board Election Project, LBI is creating a National 
School Board Elections Project aimed at identifying “personalities, issues, budgets and voting records 
for the largest school districts in the country.” The project in Wisconsin initially targeted the state’s 
20 largest districts and includes investigative reports from Education Action Group (EAG).  As of 2014, 
Ballotpedia averaged over 300,000 views a day. LBI has grown from one staffer in 2006 to 45 full and 
part time staff and a budget of over $3,000,000 in 2014. 2013 income for LBI was $3,078,000, its 
largest donor was DonorsTrust ($2.6 million), $314,000 from other foundations and $189,000 from 
individual donors. Expenses were $3,002,000. 

 
 
 

26 

 Manhattan Institute for Policy Research (NY) 
 
2016: (Recommended) $475,000, $200,000 to support general operations, $200,000 to the Center 
for Energy Policy and the Environment (CEPE), and another $75,000 to support the Future of Cities 
Symposia. Excluding Barder funding, this grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to 
Manhattan Institute to $8,216,560. The grant supported a number of Manhattan endeavors 
including: The Center for State and Local Leadership, the publication of City Journal, the Center for 
Legal Policy, and the economic policy organization “e21.” For CEPE, Bradley praised the research and 
writing the Center is doing and, in particular, the work of Peter Huber, Mark Mills and Robert Bryce. 
Bradley notes Manhattan Institute’s climate program “succeeded in identifying and publicizing so 
many of the falsehoods that surround energy and the environment.” 
 
2015-2016: (Barder Fund): $500,000 over two years “to identify the kinds of interventions that instill 
in at risk youth the virtues and character traits that favor stable families… MI proposes to commission 
and work with an outside evaluator to conduct a rigorous, empirical assessment of the life outcomes 
of participants in a limited number – likely less than five – of particular programs of well established, 
African American led nonprofit organizations focused on engaging disadvantage children from poor 
and minority communities.” 
 
2015: $525,000 to support general operations, the Center for Energy Policy, and the Future of Cities 
Symposia. The Symposia is led by Ed Glaeser and “offers a modest but important opportunity for 
prominent urban policy scholars and leading urban thought leaders and practitioners to come 
together to bring fresh analysis to bear on the development of forward looking policy solutions.” 
 

Mercatus Center (VA) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $95,000, $20,000 to support Adam Smith Fellowships and $75,000 to support 
general operations. These grants would bring the total amount of Bradley funding to Mercatus to 
$206,500.  The fellowships support attendance to Hayek seminars at the Mercatus Center as well as a 
stipend. Friedrich Hayek is a 20th century Austrian economist who the Kochs have made famous for 
his economic theories, the basis for right wing free market economics. The grant will also fund 
research to solve public policy problems. 
 
2015: $50,000 to support Adam Smith Fellowships and research on state fiscal policy. 
 

Moving Picture Institute (NY) 

 
2015: $35,000 to support general operations. As of this grant MPI has received $550,000 from the 
Bradley Foundation. “Counterbalancing Hollywood’s use of film to advance progressivism, MPI 
develops, produces and aggressively markets films on what freedom is and why it matters. It 
conducts screenwriting workshops for young filmmakers and places them in internships with high 
profile industry professionals… MPI’s feature, television and internet films embrace themes 
consonant with Bradley’s interests: the academy’s abandonment of purpose; the failure of urban 
public school systems; public sector unions; UN corruption; eminent domain abuse; the heroism of 
American soldiers; the persecution of Christians abroad; and radical egalitarianism.” 
 
 

27 

 Moving Pictures Institute films have been aired on PBS, BBC, Discovery and Disney channels and are 
available on ITunes and Netflix. The grant proposal notes that one MPI film has received an Oscar 
nomination. “MPI grants fellowships to rising filmmakers involved in commercially viable films… The 
entertainment industry has effectively exploited the fact that film, more than other medium, shapes 
popular culture. Absent the corrective force of history education, Hollywood has been able to 
influence public attitudes. MPI plays an essential role in undermining that influence.” 
 
2014: $35,000 to support general operations.  
 
2013: $35,000 to support general operations.  
 

National Legal and Policy Center (VA) 

 
2015: $25,000 to support general operations. As of this grant NLPC has received $320,000 from the 
Bradley Foundation. They fight compulsory union dues and union activities. Founded in 1991. It’s 
Organized Labor Accountability Project (OLAP) fights against “compulsory union dues for political 
purposes” by exposing “abuses by Big Labor.” The “Union Corruption Update” is its bi-weekly 
newsletter. According to Bradley, the group helped “expose corrupt behavior” associated with 
ACORN, which worked with SEIU, and it was a critic of the auto bailout which it described as a “favor” 
to UAW.  
 
2014: $10,000 to support general operations. 
 
2013: $10,000 to support general operations. 
 

National Review Institute (NY) 

 
2015: $100,000 to support general operations. As of this grant, NRI has received $256,000 from the 
Bradley Foundation. “NRI’s new Regional Partnership Events program, with Bradley’s encouragement, 
works with conservative state think tanks and others to bring smart speakers who contribute to 
National Review to new audiences with a hunger for hearing from people like them.” 
 
2014: $100,000 to support general operations. 
 

National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation (VA) 

 
2015: $100,000 to support general operations of this anti union organization, a primary backer of anti 
union legislation at the state and federal level which defunds unions, to help weaken the left. As of 
this grant, NRTWLDF has received $1,151,500 from the Bradley Foundation. This grant is to support 
this organization’s “pursuit of vindicating and expanding employee rights in the face of Big Labor’s 
infringements on them.” 
 
2014: $75,000 to support general operations. NRTWLDF won a “resounding victory” in Washington 
state Davenport v. Washington Education Association and also won case in the Supreme Court in 
2012, Knox v SEIU. “Bradley has always expressed a particular interest in combating coercive union 
power as exercised through the anti democratic ‘card check’ process… NRTWLDF’s litigation and 
 

28 

 other activities emphasize the same interest… With the help of attorneys from NRTWLDF and the 
Bradley supported Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty, three Wisconsin civil servants asked the 
Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals last year to uphold Gov. Scott Walker’s public sector union reform 
measures in Act 10… It is also fighting union only project labor agreements and ‘labor peace’ 
ordinances.”  
 
2013: $75,000 to support general operations. “Its 17 in house attorneys are currently litigating almost 
200 cases and administrative actions in all 50 states.” NRTWLDF “is trying to stop the threat of forced 
unionism in new employment sectors. New union targets include doctors, nurses, home care 
workers, graduate students, airport screeners, temp workers, charter school teachers and 
independent contractors.” 
 

Philanthropy Roundtable (DC) 

 
2016: (Recommended; Listed under Communities Foundation of Texas) $250,000 to support the 
Independence Project. If funded, it will bring the total money Bradley has provided to Philanthropy 
Roundtable to $5,087,500. “The Philanthropy Roundtable’s Independence Project aims to intervene 
and redirect veterans away from choosing only the disability path rather them focusing resources on 
helping former service members integrate into civilian life in healthy ways… They have been exposed 
to negative influences and poor guidance during a time of vulnerability. They choose a path of 
disability based on ease, apprehension about the future, and peer pressure.” 
 
2015: $250,000 to support general operations. Philanthropy Roundtable provides the following to its 
supporters: “customized guidance by program experts with opportunities for strategic collaboration; 
annual meeting and regional events which involve for a sharing philanthropic strategies and lessons 
learned; publications offering the best ways to be effective in particular aspects of philanthropy; and 
public policy insights, strategies and tactics promoting the rights of donors and private foundations to 
choose how and where to spend their charitable assets.” 
 

Reason Foundation (CA) 

 
2015: $50,000 to support an Infrastructure Policy Project. As of this grant, Reason has received a total 
of $1,242,500 from the Bradley Foundation. “Reason’s infrastructure policy project will develop a set 
of reports that offer specific and concrete tools to solve particular infrastructure policy problems… 
Information derived from the research undertaken during this project will be shared with members of 
ALEC, the Council of State Governments, and Association Municipal Planning Organizations.” 
 
2014: $25,000 to support its Public Sector Reform Budget Project. The project was launched in 2013 
with a $1 million grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The goal of the project is to 
produce “public sector pension reform,” meaning pension privatization, in at least four jurisdictions 
within a two year span. “In terms of facilitating pension reform the Project intends to do the 
following: 1) conduct a two day pension reform Project for officials in 8 10 jurisdictions with the 
greatest potential for success; 2) provide online expert advice to policy makers engaged in pension 
reform efforts.”  

 
 
 

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 School Choice Wisconsin, Inc. (WI) 
 
2016: (Recommended) $290,000 to support general operations. This grant would bring the total 
amount of Bradley funding to SCW to $3,720,000. SCW has provided consistent support for the 
Parental School Choice Initiative statewide, as well as programs in Milwaukee and Racine. “They 
began with a campaign to inform parents that School Choice existed. Using a list of 100,000 
individuals who were likely to qualify for Choice, SCW conducted phone surveys to narrow down the 
list. 45,000 households received mailings about the enrollment period, directing interested families 
how to apply and connecting them to the Department of Public Instruction (website); they also 
received a robocall remind(ing) them to apply and offering SCW’s toll free number for assistance. 
There was also a two week information(al) radio campaign in out state markets.” SCW issues press 
releases with success stories which appear on its website and local newspapers. SCW uses targeted 
advertising on Facebook and operates at the grassroots level. 
 
2015: $290,000 to support general operations. “Probably as a result of (SCW’s) efforts, applications 
for the Wisconsin Parental Choice Program (WPCP) exceed the State mandated enrollment caps. 
3400 applications were submitted to fill only 500 slots last fall.” 
 
2014: $290,000 to support general operations. 
 

Steamboat Institute (CO) 

 
2016 (Barder Fund recommended): $50,000 to support work on state infrastructure. “Steamboat 
would like to expand its Speakers Series – to host or co host more events at the University of 
Colorado in Boulder, where it held two events last year, and elsewhere around the Rocky Mountain 
region. It also wants to expand its Freedom Conference, to allow more people to either attend or 
view its programming online.” 
 

Students for Liberty (DC) 

 
2015: $10,000 to support general operations. This is the first grant Bradley Foundation has made to 
SFL. “Only 6 years old SFL has grown from an original one group of 30 students to a US and 
international organization encompassing 1,369 groups… Its early on efforts to establish a viable 
alumni group will pay dividends in the years ahead… the group’s work especially at universities in the 
US offers an active alternative to those conventional radical orthodoxies held by so many of our 
nation’s students.” 
 

Tax Foundation (DC) 

 
2016: (Recommended) $220,000 to support the Center for State Tax Policy (CSTP), general 
operations, and the Tax Modeling Project. This grant would bring the total amount of Bradley funding 
to TF to $880,000. The Tax Foundation is famous for Tax Freedom Day, the annual calculation of the 
exact day Americans have earned enough to pay off their taxes for the year. “TF provides facts and 
figures to undermine the politics of ‘class warfare.’” TF uses tax simulation models at the federal level 
to argue for tax reform, conducts 10-week educational programs for Congressional staff and at the 
state level publishes its Business Tax Climate Index. 
 

30 

  
“TF brings authority to debates on fundamental tax reform and the question of what tax system will 
be most conducive to economic growth… Its CSTP is seeking to improve its effectiveness in doing so 
at the state level… Any support of CSTP would be of a piece with that also given by Bradley to, among 
others, the American Legislative Exchange Council’s (ALEC) Center for State Fiscal Reform, the 
Americans for Tax Reform Foundation, the Interstate Policy Alliance, and the State Policy Network— 
with all of whom the Tax Foundation maintains a good working relationship, further development of 
which staff has strongly encouraged.” 
 
On its Tax Modeling Project, “TF uses its dynamic Tax and Growth model to analyze the economic 
consequences of tax proposals and craft more pro growth alternatives… At the state level, TF hosts 
monthly State Tax Working Group meetings for government, civic, and trade association 
representatives from all 50 states.” 
 
2015: $70,000 to support general operations. In 2015, “TF will launch the Center for Economic 
Analysis to train the next generation of dynamic modelers and economists.” 
 
2014: $50,000 to support general operations. 

 
Think Freely Media (DC) 

 
2016:  (Recommended)  $250,000  to  support  a  public  education  project.  This  grant  would  bring  the 
total  amount  of  Bradley  funding  to  TFM  to  $750,000.  The  project  is  called  “Hark!  Podcasting,”  and 
TFM wants to expand operations to reach more listeners. 
 
2015: $250,000 to support a public education project. “Earlier this year, Bradley gave IPI $150,000 for 
a larger effort to better engage the African American community on the benefits of conservative 
solutions… Now, TFM would like to begin an equally big effort to better engage the Latino 
community.” 
 
2014: $250,000 in first time support of its Policy Freedom Fund (PFF). This was the first grant the 
Bradley Foundation made to Think Freely Media. TFM was involved in three specific state policy 
projects: one with IPI, one with the Commonwealth Foundation in PA, and another with the 
Foundation for Government Accountability. 
 

•

IL: Phase I, regarding the economic and other effects of a proposed state amendment to 
allow a progressive state income tax, was completed in 2013, costing less than $20,000. 
Phase II is underway (2014) 
 

•

 

•

 

PA: Regarding the effects of privatization of liquor sales, cost $71,563. "Pennsylvania is 
one of two states (Utah) with a government monopoly on alcohol sales. Last year five 
targeted State Senators switched their votes from ‘no’ or ‘lean no’ to ‘yes’ when it came to 
a committee vote." 
Alaska: Regarding the effects on the economy and individual of enrolling in the ACA, cost 
$91,680. "Of 425 privately insured in the target sample zero enrolled. As of March 2014, 
Alaska was 58.3% short of its targeted enrollment," ranking 43rd. 
31 

  
“TFM’s PFF is particularly interested in … aggregating data about ‘persuadables’ in the middle, not 
necessarily just ‘selling to the base’ as is already common. It will fund projects with state think tanks 
and allies that: a) aggressively market free enterprise and liberty to persuadables; b) on issues that 
have timely and perhaps geographic strategic relevance; and, c) can be proven to add value to others’ 
existing work on those issues.” Bradley indicated this was an opportunity to complement other 
groups in improving conservative state policy infrastructure. The $250,000 matched Richard Uihlein’s 
contribution. 
 

Young America’s Foundation (VA) 

 
2015: $65,000 to support the Bradley Award Dinner at the Reagan Ranch Center and National 
Journalism Center fellowships. As of this grant, YAF has received a total of $649,700 from the Bradley 
Foundation. Bradley money will help fund five fellowships in investigative journalism. “YAF is making 
efforts to reach more students in the Midwest. These efforts have included the Milwaukee Freedom 
Conference held in March 2012… YAF also sponsors the annual National Conservative Student 
Conference.” 
 
2014: $10,000 to support program activities. YAF will used the grant money to: a) bring Bradley prize 
winners to speak at the Reagan Ranch Center; b) increase the number of campus events; and, c) 
increase student participation in the National Journalism Center, which trains student writers.  
 
2013: $25,000 to support student programming, primarily for students from Wisconsin. “YAF will use 
award monies to identify and recruit young people from our state to become active in its programs. 
These would include its high school and college national and regional conferences as well as the 
National Journalism Center training program.”  

 

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