Donors Trustas founded in 1999 and is connected to Donors Capital Fund. Donors Trust is a “donor-advised fund,” which means that contributors to the fund can recommend how the money is allocated, but do not have final say. In return, contributors receive a bigger tax write-off than they would with a family foundation and they preserve their anonymity. While most of the contributors to Donors Trust are unknown, Charles G. Koch, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation have reported contributions. Donors Trust contributes tens of millions of dollars annually to conservative think tanks and advocacy groups.^[1] These include the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the National Rifle Association’s Freedom Action Fund.^[2]

The Sarah Scaife Foundation is the largest of three foundations^[3] that make up the Pittsburgh based Scaife family foundations. Under the direction of the late Richard Mellon Scaife in the late 60s, heir to the fortune of Andrew Mellon, the Scaife foundations started to direct the majority of their assets toward conservative causes.^[4] Scaife helped fund the Heritage foundation and the Hoover institution in their early days, and continue to support the major conservative think tanks. Other examples of grantees include FreedomWorks, the tea party group backed by the Koch network, the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Commonwealth Foundation for Public Policy Alternatives, a PA based think tank associated with ALEC and SPN.^[5] [6]

The Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation was founded in 1942, and became a major organization with a national impact following the 1985 acquisition of the Allen-Bradley company by Rockwell International, a fortune 500 manufacturing company. This inflow of cash, along with the hiring of Michael Joyce of the conservative John M. Olin Foundation, turned Bradley from a locally focused philanthropic organization in Milwaukee to the nationally focused foundation it is today, granting around $40 million annually.^[7] Since 2011, the majority of grants from the Bradley foundation have gone to conservative groups, think tanks like AEI and The Heritage Foundation, and religious freedom groups.

The Ed Uihlein Family foundation is run by businessman Richard Uihlein, the son of Edgar Uihlien. Richard Uihlein is an influential player in Illinois and Wisconsin state politics. He donated $2.6 million to Illinois Governor Bruce Rauner’s 2014 campaign, and another $2.5 million to the Unintimidated super PAC that backed Scott Walker’s presidential campaign. [8]The foundation also has giving significant sums of money to the Illinois Policy Institute in the past, which is affiliated with the Liberty Justice Center; the main representative for the plaintiffs in Janus. The Uihlein family is also well connected to the Bradley family. David Uihlein Jr. served as vice chairman of the Lynde and Harry Bradley foundation, and his father served on the board of the Allen-Bradley company.

The foundation was founded by William A. Dunn in 1994 in order to advocate for and fund libertarian causes. Mr. Dunn is the founder of Dunn Capital Management in Florida, which has over $1 billion assets under management, and seems to be the main source of the foundation’s assets. The Dunns’ gave millions to the Institute for Justice, the Pacific Legal foundation, and the Landmark Legal Foundation.^[9] Since 2000, the foundation has also given well over $60 million to conservative groups like the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Cato Institute, the Mackinac Center and the Reason Foundation.^[10]