Conservative benefactors tend to provide more operating support for their favorite organizations; this enables them to respond quickly to current events with pointed analysis and to woo legislators, rather than expend resources continually searching for more capital. Conservative think tanks also place a greater emphasis on hiring executive staff members and administrators who are ideologically aligned with their missions and who have public affairs experience, according to a recent survey Rich conducted.

From its beginnings, the Heritage Foundation’s efforts reflected a clearly partisan agenda. As its website says, Heritage is devoted to “principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values and a strong national defense.” Along with Coors, Heritage enjoyed support from libertarian-leaning benefactors such as Olin, Scaife and Brady.

Their investments have been rewarded. Heritage has developed such close ties to Capitol Hill and such a fine-tuned operation that its scholars can deliver their position briefs to legislators just prior to a House or Senate session on the issue at hand, in time for lawmakers to review them and enter the session with Heritage’s analysis top of mind.

Indeed, McGann credits Heritage with driving a move away from think tanks that are academically grounded to policy-oriented groups. Before Heritage, he notes, “The orientation for many years was: We have ideas, [so] policymakers will beat a path to our door to get our ideas. The reality is that is not the case.”

Among the early conservative think tank champions, Olin also supported the Hoover Institution, Hudson Institute and American Enterprise Institute, all through the family foundation that he formed in 1953. He was meticulous about the type of research his foundation funded. He was horrified to see the Ford Foundation, over the course of many years, drift toward grants that supported leftist causes. To avoid ideological drift with his own legacy, Olin designed his foundation to be self-terminating—its assets would be exhausted one generation after his own. Before Olin died in 1982, he hand-selected successors to oversee it. James Piereson, a former political science professor who exited what he describes as “leftist-leaning academia” to climb the ladder at the Olin Foundation, was theexecutive director who steered the endowment through its final year, 2005, in accordance with Olin’s wishes.