Philanthropic Foundations and their Relationship to Think Tanks in Germany and the US

Philanthropic foundations can influence public policy and the climate of opinion in many ways. They can sponsor academics who publish research in support of a particular idea or worldview, they can cooperate with lawyers to pursue change through litigation or with activists to stage protests and pressure campaigns and they can pursue a media strategy by e.g. creating and supporting media outlets, funding journalists or documentary film-makers or by underwriting books and magazines. They also can and do cooperate with think tanks, which is the focus of this paper. The paper will look at the ways philanthropic foundations establish cooperation with think tanks for the purpose of shaping and influencing public policy and the climate of opinion. The focus will focus on at least three different types of cooperation: (i) the operating foundation acting as a think tank, (ii) the foundation providing funding for think tanks (institutional as well as project based) and (iii) creating project-related strategic partnerships and networks between foundations and think tanks. Since the landscapes of both philanthropic foundations as well as think tanks are rather different in Germany and the United States with respect to foundation size and the donor environment, the legal and cultural framework, the role of public funding of think tanks etc., we would expect significant differences in the ways think tanks and foundations interact and cooperate and also in the purposes of that cooperation. Among the questions, this paper addresses are: What kind of philanthropic foundations and what type of donors cooperate with think tanks? What is their motive for this work in relation to other foundation activities? Does this cooperation focus on a particular type of think tank (academic think tank, advocacy think tank, do-tank etc.) and which policy areas are favored for cooperation? Is there a trend in either country, that the influence of big donors and foundations on think tanks and public policy research will become greater as governmental influence? To what extent to these trends benefit or jeopardize democracy and participation? The research for this paper is exploratory in nature and is part of the preliminary and preparatory work towards the establishment of a larger multi-disciplinary research cluster Philanthropy and Giving - Pathways to an Intercultural Analysis at Heidelberg University. It will encompass interviews with foundation and think tank staff in Germany and the US as well as other form of qualitative research such as participant observation of the cases (foundations and think tanks) selected for this study in both countries.