Philanthropy Roundtable

{{#badges:Koch Exposed}}The Philanthropy Roundtable was established by the Bradley Foundation in 1987 as a 501(c)(3) organization to help facilitate conservative grant-making. The organization describes itself as "America’s leading network of charitable donors working to strengthen our free society, uphold donor intent, and protect the freedom to give." ^[1]

In 2012, Philanthropy Roundtable recorded an annual revenue of $6,850,567, and $6,109,817 in total expenses, while issuing $250,000 in grants.^[2]

Koch Wiki

Charles Koch is the right-wing billionaire owner of Koch Industries. As one of the richest people in the world, he is a key funder of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN). In SourceWatch, key articles on Charles Koch and his late brother David include: Koch Brothers, Americans for Prosperity, Stand Together Chamber of Commerce, Stand Together, Koch Family Foundations, Koch Universities, and I360.

Ties to the Koch Brothers

In October 2011 the Roundtable awarded Charles G. Koch the William E. Simon Prize for Philanthropic Leadership. The award gives $250,000 to a charity of the prize recipient's choice, and is intended to "honor living philanthropists who have shown exemplary leadership through their own charitable giving, either directly or through foundations they have created." In its explanation for why Koch was the recipient, the Roundtable claimed that "For more than 40 years, he has been at the forefront of strategic investment in ideas, think tanks, and academic research." ^[3] Not surprisingly, Koch has maintained a longstanding financial relationship with the foundation.

Between 1993 and 2005, the Philanthropy Roundtable received $94,500 in donations from Koch's own philanthropic organization, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation.^[4] Koch contributed $125,000 more to the Roundtable between 2006-2009, bringing Charles Koch's total contributions to the Philanthropy Roundtable between 1993 and 2009 to $219,500.^[5]

Koch has a long history of involvement at the Roundtable's annual meetings. A 1997 report by the National Committee on Response Philanthropy documented the participation of the Koch Brothers in the 1995 conference:

"In a presentation at the Philanthropy Roundtable's 1995 annual conference, Richard Fink, president of the Charles G. Koch and Claude R. Lambe charitable foundations, made good use of market metaphors to outline how foundations can exert the greatest impact on public policy. Adapting laissez-faire economist Friedrich Hayek's model of the production process to social change grant-making, Fink argued that the translation of ideas into action requires the development of intellectual raw materials, their conversion into specific policy products, and the marketing and distribution of these products to citizen-consumers.

Grantmakers, Fink argued, would do well to invest in change along the entire production continuum, funding scholars and university programs where the intellectual framework for social transformation is developed, think tanks where scholarly ideas get translated into specific policy proposals, and implementation groups to bring these proposals into the political marketplace and eventually to consumers." ^[6]

Charles Koch was a presenter at the 2011 annual Philanthropy Roundtable conference.^[7]

Background

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, "The Philanthropy Roundtable arose as part of a strategy to build a rightwing funding base to contest the power of the "liberal establishment." The organization was initially financed by the Institute for Education Affairs, founded in 1978 by Irving Kristol and former U.S. Treasury Secretary and Olin Foundation president William Simon, two key figures in shaping the strategies of corporate and rightwing philanthropy. Under their direction, the IEA aimed to funnel millions of dollars into the "war of ideas" with what they called the "adversary culture"—meaning liberals, progressives, and secularists. ^[8]

Each year the Roundtable convenes an annual conference drawing together presenters from conservative advocates, media commentators - such as David Brooks from the New York Times - and mainstream non-government organizations. Its November 2004 annual conference at Palm Beach, Florida, USA included a special pre conference environmental meeting. The after dinner speaker was Danish climate change denier Bjorn Lomborg while other feature sessions were on oceans and aquaculture policy, the fate of the Amazon forests, environmental education and water policy in Florida.

A feature session of the main conference agenda was a discussion on what to do about teachers unions. [5].

Lack of Transparency

According to Media Matters database on conservative funders, the Roundtable is outspoken in its opposition to transparency. "The Philanthropy Foundation fights what it considers the increasingly growing public view that foundations should be accountable to the public. The group is opposed to more efforts at transparency, believing that "foundations are private organizations that should be free to make their own governance and grantmaking decisions so long as they operate with integrity and use their assets for genuinely charitable purposes."" ^[9]

Education Reform a Priority

In an interview with the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the President of the Philanthropy Roundatble, Adam Meyerson, indicated that education 'reform' was one of the key priorities for the organisation during George W. Bush's second term, "President Bush has the potential to be the most important president in the history of American education -- the president who finally solves our crisis in the education of low-income children. But he cannot achieve this breakthrough simply through the federal No Child Left Behind law, the focus of his first term. Reform of education is going to come primarily from the ground up -- from state and local government, and from philanthropists and social entrepreneurs," he said.[6]

Links to Neoconservatives

According to the Institute for Policy Studies, the Roundtable has well-established links to prominent neoconservatives:

"Philanthropy Roundtable directors have included Leslie Lenkwosky and John Waters, both of whom served in the George W. Bush administration, as well as Kim Dennis, now executive director of the Searle Freedom Trust. Adam Meyerson, a former vice president of the Heritage Foundation, has been the director since 2001. Meyerson is co-editor of the Wall Street Journal on Management, former editorial writer for the Wall Street Journal, former managing editor of the American Spectator, and the spouse of Nina Shea, the director of the Center for Religious Freedom at Hudson Institute and a long-standing neoconservative activist." ^[10]