Bradley Foundation

The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, is a large and influential 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.

When the Allen-Bradley Company was acquired by Rockwell International Corporation in 1985, a significant portion of the proceeds was dedicated to establishing The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. Although it has no direct ties to the Allen-Bradley Company, the purpose of the Foundation is to commemorate Lynde and Harry Bradley by preserving and extending the principles and philosophy by which they lived and upon which they built the company. [1]

The Bradley brothers were committed to preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically. The Bradleys believed that the good society is a free society. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is likewise devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual, and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense at home and abroad of American ideas and institutions. In addition, recognizing that responsible self-government depends on enlightened citizens and informed public opinion, the Foundation supports scholarly studies and academic achievement. [2]

The Bradley Foundation's former president, Michael S. Joyce, was instrumental in creating the Philanthropy Roundtable, a network of foundations that support Republican advocacy organizations.

Criticism

In the early 1990s the foundation helped support The American Spectator magazine, which at the time was researching damaging material on President Bill Clinton. Before that, it had paid to have David Brock's attack on Anita Hill published.

The Bradley Foundation has provided important support for groups that advocated an attack on Iraq as a response to the September 11, 2001 attacks, such as the Project for a New American Century and the John M. Olin Center for Strategic Studies. In early 2003, Joyce bragged to a local paper that President George W. Bush and members of his administration were influenced by the policy discussions of those groups. Joyce commented that the attack only hastened Bush's inevitable move towards neoconservatism. [3]

Phil Wilayto, a writer for the communist Workers World Party and MediaTransparency, a left wing website 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 "investigative report" on the Bradley Foundation, The Feeding Trough, on behalf of the "A Job is a Right Campaign" in Milwaukee. The report attacks the Bradley Foundation for allegedly commissioning the studies that supported the Welfare Reform legislation in Wisconsin. Wiyalto has stated that Wisconsin welfare reform is a draconian program that has increased the misery of the poor by supplying business with forced labor at wages inadequate to maintain a reasonable standard of living for the purpose of bringing massive profits to private business and non-profit agencies. He has accused the Bradley Foundation of using the black community of Milwaukee as a laboratory to increase profits.

People for the American Way alleges that the Bradley Foundations underreports its giving to right-wing organizations. [4]

Past and present grantees

List of grants and cumulative amounts given from 1985-2002 [5].

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 [6]

Over $5 million

• Freedom House, to support Freedom in the World Survey.[7]
• National Affairs, to support publication of The Public Interest and The National Interest: $350.000. [8]

Over $2 million

• Federalist Society, Los Angeles, California, To support general operations: $568,750. [9]
• Center for the Study of Popular Culture

Over $1 million

• Brookings Institution
• Intercollegiate Studies Institute, Wilmington, Delaware, to support general operations: $90,000. [10]
• Institute for American Values, New York, New York, To support general program activities: $100,000. [11]
• Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace
• Institute for Educational Advancement, Washington, D.C., to support general operations: $180.000. [12]
• Institute for Justice

Over $500,000

• Black Alliance for Educational Options, Washington, DC, to support general operations: $200,000. [13]
• 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. [14]
• 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. [15]

$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. [16]
• 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