Above is a Muckety map of Heritage Foundation funders. Laurie Bennett of Muckety says this:
America’s top think tanks have grown into multi-million-dollar operations with expensive real estate in Washington and other cities. (Heritage, headquartered on Capitol Hill, values its properties at more than $50 million.) Some organizations, including Heritage, offer seven-figure salaries to their top execs.
As our Muckety map above shows, Heritage funders include some of the most conservative wealthy families in the country.
Many of these families, such as the Kochs, the Scaifes, the Popes and the DeVoses, are also big political donors. It’s hardly coincidence that as benefactors have become more overtly political, so have the think tanks receiving their money.
DeMint will likely attract the same donors who have backed the Tea Party, a group that includes the Kochs.
The importance of money-raising in his new job is evident in the multiple roles played by Edwin Feulner, the outgoing president of Heritage. Feulner sits on the boards of two funders of Heritage - the Roe Foundation and the Sarah Scaife Foundation.Here is a previous Think Tanks Watch post on billionaires who donate to think tanks.