Bradley Foundation

Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation

Company type	Private charitable foundation
Founded	1985
Headquarters	Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Key people	Thomas L. Rhodes Chairman David V. Uihlein, Jr. Vice Chairman Michael W. Grebe President and CEO
Revenue	54,916,115 United States dollar (2019)
Website	bradleyfdn.org

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a large foundation with about half a billion US dollars in assets. According to the Bradley Foundation 1998 Annual Report, it gives away more than $30 million per year. The Foundation has financed efforts to support federal institutes, publications and school choice and educational projects.

History

When Rockwell International Corporation bought Allen-Bradley in 1985, a significant portion of the proceeds went into the creation of The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. The organization was founded in an attempt to preserve and extend the principles and philosophy used by the Bradley brothers.

During their life they were committed to preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise. According to them, "the good society is a free society. The Bradley Foundation is likewise devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it."

The foundation supports limited government, conceived of as a dynamic marketplace where economic, intellectual, and cultural activity can flourish. It also defends purports to defend American ideas and institutions. Next to that it recognizes that responsible self government depends on informing citizens and creating a well informed public opinion. The foundation tries to accomplish that by financing scholarly studies and academic achievements. [1]

The Bradley Foundation's former president, Michael S. Joyce, was instrumental in creating the Philanthropy Roundtable. The goal of the Roundtable's founders was to provide a forum where donors could discuss the principles and practices that inform the best of America's charitable tradition. Currently, there are more than 600 Roundtable Associates.

In the early 1990s the foundation helped support The American Spectator, which at the time was researching damaging material on President Bill Clinton. In the March 1992 issue of the magazine, David Brock called Anita Hill "a bit nutty and a bit slutty", and in January, 1994, it published Brock's article regarding Troopergate and Clinton's alleged extramarital affairs. David Brock later recanted both articles.

The Bradley Foundation has provided funding for the Project for a New American Century (PNAC). PNAC brought together prominent members of the (George W) Bush Administration (Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz) in the late 1990s to articulate their neoconservative foreign policy, including sending a letter to President Bill Clinton urging him to invade Iraq.

Criticism

People for the American Way alleges that the Bradley Foundations under-reports its giving to right-wing organizations. [2]

Between 1985 and 1991, it was one of five foundations to fund the George C. Marshall Institute, a known Global Warming skeptic.

Phil Wilayto, former coordinator of A Job is a Right Campaign in Milwaukee and a contributor to MediaTransparency, a progressive Web site that tracks the funding of right-wing politics, writes:

The overall objective of the Bradley Foundation, however, is to return the U.S. -- and the world -- to the days before governments began to regulate Big Business, before corporations were forced to make concessions to an organized labor force. In other words, laissez-faire capitalism: capitalism with the gloves off.

Wilayto also published a 140-page report on the Bradley Foundation, The Feeding Trough, on behalf of the "A Job is a Right Campaign" in Milwaukee. The report claims the Bradley Foundation commissioned the studies that supported the welfare reform legislation in Wisconsin, which he contends harmed the state's poor residents. He also claimed the Bradley Foundation exploits Milwaukee's black community.

Governance

Current members of the board of directors of the Bradley Foundation are: William Armstrong, Reed Coleman, Terry Considine, Pierre du Pont, Michael Grebe, Thomas Smallwood, Bob Smith, and David Uihlein.

Past and present grantees

List of grants and cumulative amounts given from 1985-2002 [3].

National organizations

These are a few of the many donations that have been granted by the Foundation.

Over $10 million

• American Enterprise Institute
• Heritage Foundation, for support to the Domestic Studies Policy Program and Bradley Resident Fellows Program.Project on Federalism and the states: $853,125 [4]

Over $5 million

• Freedom House, to support Freedom in the World Survey.[5]
• National Affairs, to support publication of The Public Interest and The National Interest: $350.000. [6]

Over $2 million

• Federalist Society, Los Angeles, California, To support general operations: $568,750. [7]
• David Horowitz Freedom Center

Over $1 million

• Brookings Institution
• Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, Delaware, to support general operations: $90,000. [8]
• Institute for American Values, New York, New York, To support general program activities: $100,000. [9]
• Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
• Institute for Educational Advancement, Washington, D.C., to support general operations: $180.000. [10]
• Institute for Justice

Over $500,000

• Black Alliance for Educational Options, Washington, DC, to support general operations: $200,000. [11]
• American Spectator Educational Foundation

Over $100,000

• Foundation for Education Reform and Accountability
• Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
• Heartland Institute, Chicago, Illinois, To support School Reform News and a Chicago-specific school choice initiative: $50.000. [12]
• Third Way Foundation (see Third way)
• Progressive Foundation (see Democratic Leadership Council)
• University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, To support the Center on Reinventing Public Education’s project “Doing Choice Right”: $170.000. [13]
• Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School and the Stanford Center for Internet & Society at Stanford Law School for the Net Dialogue project [14]

$100,000

• Middle East Media Research Institute

Less than $100,000

• Children First America
• Council for the Spanish Speaking, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, to support the Summer Youth Program $5,000. [15]
• Potomac Foundation

Unknown

• Center for Education Reform
• Child Abuse Prevention Fund
• Corporation for National and Community Service
• Thomas B. Fordham Institute
• Middle East Media Research Institute
• Cato Institute
• Citizens for a Sound Economy
• Institute on Religion and Democracy
• Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf
• Committee for the Free World
• Alexis de Tocqueville Institution
• Institute for Humane Studies
• New Citizenship Project
• Project for the New American Century

Local charities

Over $5 million

• Wisconsin Policy Research Institute
• Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra

Over $1 million

• Madison Center for Educational Affairs

Over $500,000

• Milwaukee Public Library Foundation

Over $100,000

• Hunger Task Force of Milwaukee
• Wisconsin Historical Foundation

Unknown amount

• Association of Midwest Museums
• Epilepsy Association of Southwest Wisconsin
• Milwaukee Youth Symphony Orchestra
• Milwaukee Public Museum

Public officials

• Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
• Jack Kemp
• William J. Bennett

Jurists

• Robert H. Bork
• Antonin Scalia

Writers

• Marvin Olasky
• David Brock

External links

• The Bradley Foundation -- Official website
• List of Grants and Annual reports from 1997 to 2003 on the official website.
• The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation -- An analysis and critique by Phil Wilayto
• The Feeding Trough: The Bradley Foundation, "The Bell Curve" and the Real Story Behind W-2, Wisconsin's National Model for Welfare Reform. -- Investigative report by Phil Wilayto
• Response from Michael Joyce, foundation president, to The Feeding Trough