Portal:State Policy Network/SPN Funding

While it has become an $83 million dollar right-wing empire, SPN and most of its affiliates do not post their major donors on their websites. The identities of the donors we have discovered reveal that SPN is largely funded by global corporations -- such as Reynolds American, Altria, Microsoft, AT&T, Verizon, GlaxoSmithKline, Kraft Foods, Express Scripts, Comcast, Time Warner, and the Koch- and Tea Party-connected DCI Group lobbying and PR firm -- that stand to benefit from SPN’s destructive agenda, as well as out-of-state special interests like the billionaire Koch brothers, the Waltons, the Bradley Foundation, the Roe Foundation of SPN's founder, and the Coors family -- who are underwriting an extreme legislative agenda that undermines the traditional rights of modern Americans. Corporations like Facebook and the for-profit online education company K12 Inc., as well as the e-cigarette company NJOY, also fund SPN, as demonstrated by its most recent annual meeting.

While, in 2007, the approximately $40 million in combined revenues of the then 52 think tanks in 45 states that were members was less than the Heritage Foundation's budget that year of $50 million, SPN president Tracie Sharp announced in late 2007 a plan to expand think-tank revenues by $50 million by 2012. In 2011, combined revenues of SPN itself and its (then) 59 member state think tanks was $83.2 million, according to a review of the groups' IRS forms 990 by the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD).

Please see the SourceWatch article on SPN Funding for more.