Maine Watchdog

Maine Watchdog was listed as hosting Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity "investigative journalists" in March 2012. It no longer appears on Franklin's list as of May 2013, but may have have been folded back into its founding organization, the State Policy Network member Maine Heritage Policy Center. The Franklin Center funds reporters in over 40 states. Despite their non-partisan description, many of the websites funded by the Franklin Center have received criticism for their conservative bias. On its website, the Franklin Center claims that it "provides 10 percent of all daily reporting from state capitals nationwide."

Franklin Center Funding
The Franklin Center was launched by the Chicago-based Sam Adams Alliance (SAM), a 501(c)(3) devoted to pushing free-market ideals. SAM gets funding from the State Policy Network, which is partially funded by The Claude R. Lambe Foundation. Charles Koch, one of the billionaire brothers who co-own Koch Industries, sits on the board of this foundation. SAM also receives funding from the Rodney Fund. The Franklin Center also receives funding from the Wisconsin-based Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, a conservative grant-making organization.

Franklin Center Director of Communications Michael Moroney told the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) in 2013 that the source of the Franklin Center's funding "is 100 percent anonymous." But 95 percent of its 2011 funding came from DonorsTrust, a spin-off of the Philanthropy Roundtable that functions as a large "donor-advised fund," cloaking the identity of donors to right-wing causes across the country (CPI did a review of Franklin's Internal Revenue Service records). Mother Jones called DonorsTrust "the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement" in a February 2013 article. Franklin received DonorTrust's second-largest donation in 2011.

Related SourceWatch Articles

 * Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity
 * Maine Heritage Policy Center
 * State Policy Network
 * American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC)