Richard Stengel, the new editor of TIME magazine, was previously the head of an organization called the National Constitution Center.
The National Constitution Center is mostly funded by the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation -- $12 million between 2000-2004.
http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=17Some highlights:
Richard DeVos is co-founder of Amway Corporation and owner of the Orlando Magic (2004), and served as the finance chairman of the Republican National Committee. He ranks in the Forbes 400 and is, according to Forbes, amoung the world's richest people, with an estimated worth of $1.7 billion in 2003122.
DeVos attended the Christian Calvin College, and he has been associated with numerous other Christian and conservative organizatons, such as the Council for National Policy, the Chairman's Council of the Conservative Caucus, the Free Congress Foundation, and the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy. His foundation's grantmaking reflects these conservative Christian te3ndencies and affiliations. In fact, Helen DeVos told the Grand Rapids Press that "our biggest priority is to give back to Christian causes.123" The foundation ranks eighth in the top 50 U.S. foundations awarding grants for religion, circa 2000, as published by the Foundation Center.
Among the top 20 foundations studied, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation ranks fifth in total conservative policy giving, providing $12,159,101 between 1999 and 2001 to groups such as Focus on the Family, the State Policy Network, the Intercollegiate Studies Institute and other nationally influential public policy organizations in the fields of education, advocacy, research, religion, media and law. The foundation also provides grants to local (for instance, western Michigan and central Florida) churches, arts groups, ministries, and Christian Schools. For example, the foundation contributed $4 million to the Grand Rapids Christian School Association in 2000. The foundation also established and continues to fund the Urban Leadership Initiative, a national program designed to "identify and train emerging youth ministry leaders in local urgban communities.125" However, DeVos cautions that the foundation's social service grantmaking is intended to help people move out of poverty, not to "make 'em too comfortable there."126" Almost all of the grants are unrestricted.
The grantmaking of the other DeVos family foundations is similar to that of the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation. The Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation provides funding to many of the same organizations as the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation (detailed below). However, the other smaller foundations tend to give less to large national organizations and more to local Christian, arts and social service organizations in Michigan.
The contributions of the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation have helped to promulgate Christian, conservative ideals.
Most explicitly, they donated $635,386 in 1999 to Compass Arts, a nonprofit advertising firm that creates Christian ads for organizations such as Michigan Right to Life. On a national level, the foundation provides numerous grants to Christian organizations that work to influence public policy and public opinion, such as Focus on the Family, the Foundation for Traditional Values, and the Traditional Values Coalition.
People for the American Way calls Focus on the Family "the largest international religious-right group in the United States,"127 with almost 1,300 employees, a budget exceeding $120 million, 6,000 radio facilities worldwide, and 2.3 millino subscribers to its magazines. Using these resources, the organization endorses prayer in schools, private school vouchers, and "reparative therapy" for gays and lesbians, while it opposes female reproductive choice, hate crime legislation and comprehensive sexual education.
The Foundation for Traditional Values works to stop the deterioration of Judeo-Christian values "by clearly, and dynamically, revealing the role of God, faith, religion and morality in our national heritage."128 The organization hopes that public education efforts in this vein will strengthen citizen involvement.
The Traditional Values Coalition acts as a lobbying and grassroots organizaton, lobbying Congress itself and organizing local churches in lobbying efforts. The coalition's work revolves around homosexuality, reproductive rights and school curricula regarding sexuality and evolution. It sponsors voter education programs that suppy information about how various candidates voted on certain issues. It has influenced a great deal of legislation at both the state and national levels regarding hate crime, discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation, political contributions by churches, and health education curricula.
In addition to its support for Focus on the Family and the Foundation for Traditional Values, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation also supports the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty, where Betsy DeVos serves on the board. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation has supported the institute in the past. The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty attempts to link economics with religion and traditional virtues and sponsors workshops for business executives, religious leaders, professors and others involved in religion, business and economic research. The institute also publishes a number of documents in order to disseminate its view to the general public, policymakers and other leaders.
The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation also contributes to the aforementioned Council for National Policy, where Richard DeVos has served on the executive committee and board of governors and which has been described as "very dangerous and dangerously secretive"129 in the eyes of liberals. Because of its secretive nature, it is difficult to fully ascertain the activities of the council. However, it is clearly a conservative organization that works to effect public policy changes at the national level. It was founded in part by the Rev. Tim LaHaye, leader of the Moral Majority, and it strives to combat what it sees as liberal control over the country and focuses on issues in domains ranging from social to economic. ABC News reported that "it provided a forum for religiously engaged conservative Christians to influence the geography of American political power."130 The council supports a strong national defense, Christian values, conservative morals and limited government.
Like the F.M. Kirby Foundation, the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation supports the Federalist Society for Law and Public Policy Studies, the Heritage Foundation, the American Enterprise Institue for Public Policy Research, and the Media Research Center. The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation also supports the State Policy Network, an association of 40 conservative state agencies nationwide. More locally, the foundation provides funding to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, which uses its research to propose and promote various policies in Michigan. It analyzes issues such as private school vouchers, charter schools, privatization, taxes and welfare reform, and presents its evaluations and recommendations to individuals working in policy, academia, business and the media. Like many of the organizations listed abgove, the Mackinac Center promotes private, rather than government, solutions to policy issues.
The Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation also provides grants to the Free Congress Foundation (FCF), which claims that its main focus is on the "Culture War." It hopes to "return
to the culture that made it great, our traditional Judeo-Christian, Western culture."131 It opposes multiculturalism, political correctness and liberal politics. The foundation's National Empowerment Television carries conservative Christian messages into millions of homes nationwide through its 24-hour programming, including Borderline (focusing on immigration policy), Cato Forum (taxes and government regulation), Legal Notebook (crime), Straight Talk (family), and On Target with the National Rifle Association (gun policy). The organization has four main centers to address issues like law and democracy, judicial selection, cultural conservatism and technology policy.
In addition to their contributions to the Council for National Policy, the Heritage Foundation, the Federalist Society, and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, the Dick and Betsy DeVos Foundation also funds the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the National Center for Policy Analysis.
The Competitive Enterprise Institute is "dedicated to the principles of free enterprise and limited government."132 It prides itself not only on researching regulatory issues (e.g., environmental policies and antitrust legislation) but also on publicizing and advocating its analyses and ideas to the general public, policymakers and judges. Thus, as the organization is "engaged in many phases of the public policy debate,"133 it plays an important role in influencing policy at the national level.
The National Center for Policy Analysis endorses privatizing Social Security, as well as the few remaining public components of the nation's health care, education, welfare, and criminal justice systems.
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