The Acton Institute

The Acton Institute
Basic facts
Location:	Grand Rapids, Michigan
Type:	501(c)(3)
Top official:	Kris Alan Mauren, President
Founder(s):	Robert Sirico and Kris Alan Mauren
Year founded:	1990
Website:	Official website

The Acton Institute is 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. As of September 2025, the group described itself as "a think-tank whose mission is to promote a free and virtuous society characterized by individual liberty and sustained by religious principles."

Background

Kris Alan Mauren and Father Robert Sirico founded The Acton Institute in 1990. Mauren was a recent graduate of Johns Hopkins University with a degree in economics and international relations. Fr. Sirico was a priest who was inspired to found the organization after he "experienced a growing concern over the lack of training religious studies students receive in fundamental economic principles, leaving them poorly equipped to understand and address today's social problems."

As of September 2025, the organization described its mission as follows:

“

The Acton Institute for the Study of Religion and Liberty is named after the great English historian, Lord John Acton (1834-1902). He is best known for his famous remark: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.” Inspired by his work on the relation between liberty and morality, the Acton Institute seeks to articulate a vision of society that is both free and virtuous, the end of which is human flourishing. To clarify this relationship, the Institute holds seminars and publishes various books, monographs, periodicals, and articles.

”

The organization outlined the following ten core principles which it described as "integrating Judeo-Christian Truths with Free Market Principles":

Dignity of the Person: The human person, created in the image of God, is individually unique, rational, the subject of moral agency, and a co-creator. Accordingly, he possesses intrinsic value and dignity, implying certain rights and duties for both himself and other persons. These truths about the dignity of the human person are known through revelation, but they are also discernible through reason.

Social Nature of the Person: Although persons find ultimate fulfillment only in communion with God, one essential aspect of the development of persons is our social nature and capacity to act for disinterested ends. The person is fulfilled by interacting with other persons and by participating in moral goods. There are voluntary relations of exchange such as market transactions that realize economic value. These transactions may give rise to moral value as well. There are also voluntary relations of mutual dependence, such as promises, friendships, marriages, and the family, which are moral goods. These, too, may have other sorts of value, such as religious, economic, aesthetic, and so on.

Importance of Social Institutions: Since persons are by nature social, various human persons develop social institutions. The institutions of civil society, especially the family, are the primary sources of a society's moral culture. These social institutions are neither created by nor derive their legitimacy from the state. The state must respect their autonomy and provide the support necessary to ensure the free and orderly operation of all social institutions in their respective spheres.

Human Action: Human persons are by nature acting persons. Through human action, the person can actualize his potentiality by freely choosing the moral goods that fulfill his nature.

Sin: Although human beings in their created nature are good, in their current state they are fallen and corrupted by sin. The reality of sin makes the state necessary to restrain evil. The ubiquity of sin, however, requires that the state be limited in its power and jurisdiction. The persistent reality of sin requires that we be skeptical of all utopian "solutions" to social ills such as poverty and injustice.

Rule of Law and the Subsidiary Role of Government: The government's primary responsibility is to promote the common good, that is, to maintain the rule of law and to preserve basic duties and rights. The government's role is not to usurp free actions, but to minimize those conflicts that may arise when the free actions of persons and social institutions result in competing interests. The state should exercise this responsibility according to the principle of subsidiarity. This principle has two components. First, jurisdictionally broader institutions must refrain from usurping the proper functions that should be performed by the person and institutions more immediate to him. Second, jurisdictionally broader institutions should assist individual persons and institutions more immediate to the person only when the latter cannot fulfill their proper functions.

Creation of Wealth: Material impoverishment undermines the conditions that allow humans to flourish. The best means of reducing poverty is to protect private property rights through the rule of law. This allows people to enter into voluntary exchange circles in which to express their creative nature. Wealth is created when human beings creatively transform matter into resources. Because human beings can create wealth, economic exchange need not be a zero-sum game.

Economic Liberty: Liberty, in a positive sense, is achieved by fulfilling one's nature as a person by freely choosing to do what one ought. Economic liberty is a species of liberty so-stated. As such, the bearer of economic liberty not only has certain rights, but also duties. An economically free person, for example, must be free to enter the market voluntarily. Hence, those who have the power to interfere with the market are duty-bound to remove any artificial barrier to entry in the market, and also to protect private and shared property rights. But the economically free person will also bear the duty to others to participate in the market as a moral agent and in accordance with moral goods. Therefore, the law must guarantee private property rights and voluntary exchange.

Economic Value: In economic theory, economic value is subjective because its existence depends on it being felt by a subject. Economic value is the significance that a subject attaches to a thing whenever he perceives a causal connection between this thing and the satisfaction of a present, urgent want. The subject may be wrong in his value judgment by attributing value to a thing that will not or cannot satisfy his present, urgent want. The truth of economic value judgments is settled just in case that thing can satisfy the expected want. While this does not imply the realization of any other sort of value, something can have both subjective economic value and objective moral value.

Priority of Culture: Liberty flourishes in a society supported by a moral culture that embraces the truth about the transcendent origin and destiny of the human person. This moral culture leads to harmony and to the proper ordering of society. While the various institutions within the political, economic, and other spheres are important, the family is the primary inculcator of the moral culture in a society.

Leadership

As of September 2025, the following individuals held leadership positions at The Acton Institute:

• Kevin R. Augustyn, vice president of development
• Stephen P. Barrows, Ph.D., chief operating officer
• Dan Churchwell, director of programs & education
• Julia Kenney, assistant director for people & culture
• Scot Landry, executive director of Istituto Acton
• Kris Alan Mauren, president
• Michael Matheson Miller, chief of strategic initiatives, senior research fellow, and director of the Center for Global Flourishing
• John C. Pinheiro, Ph.D.', director of research
• Rev. Robert A. Sirico, president emeritus
• Thomas L. Vogt, CPA, chief financial officer

As of September 2025, the following individuals sat on The Acton Institute's Board of Directors:

• Maria Montserrat (Montse) Alvarado
• David Bahnsen
• Nathan Bond
• David A. Durrell
• Patricia S. Duthler
• Leslie Graves
• Frank J. Hanna, III
• John Hern
• J.C. Huizenga
• David C. Humphreys
• John C. Kennedy, III
• Kris Alan Mauren
• Michael Muraski
• Robert A. Sirico
• Joan Quintana

Work and activities

Legislative and policy work

The Acton Institute "produces a diverse set of publications including a quarterly magazine, a peer-reviewed journal, books, and much more to inform and educate readers about the relationship between individual liberty and religious principles, which promote and sustain the free and virtuous society." The group publishes a periodical, Spire, which it says "serves as a beacon of hope by sharing inspirational stories about Acton Institute’s supporters, scholars, and events to lift your spirit as together we build a free and virtuous society. To change hearts and minds—and the world—look forward and upward ... to the Spire." The group's publishing wing, Acton Books, "publishes both popular-level and academic books across the disciplines of theology, economics, ethics, and history. Acton Books consists of three publishing platforms: the Acton Institute imprint, Christian’s Library Press, and the Journal of Markets & Morality." The Journal of Markets & Morality is a peer-reviewed journal that "promotes intellectual exploration of the relationship between economics and morality from both social science and theological perspectives."

Notable endorsements

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Finances

The following is a breakdown of The Acton Institute's revenues and expenses from 2001 to 2023. The information comes from ProPublica.

The Acton Institute financial data 2001-2023

Year	Revenue	Expenses
2001	$3.1 million	$3.1 million
2002	$2.8 million	$2.9 million
2003	$3.6 million	$3.1 million
2004	$3.8 million	$3.8 million
2005	$3.8 million	$4.0 million
2006	$4.9 million	$4.5 million
2007	$5.0 million	$5.2 million
2008	$6.2 million	$5.4 million
2009	$5.3 million	$4.0 million
2010	$6.1 million	$5.1 million
2011	$8.4 million	$6.3 million
2012	$12.7 million	$7.4 million
2013	$10.8 million	$8.4 million
2014	$9.1 million	$9.4 million
2015	$10.7 million	$10.4 million
2016	$9.6 million	$10.0 million
2017	$10.5 million	$11.0 million
2018	$9.9 million	$10.9 million
2019	$10.5 million	$10.6 million
2020	$8.8 million	$7.1 million
2021	$15.0 million	$7.8 million
2022	$13.2 million	$11.8 million
2023	$12.0 million	$12.7 million

See also

• What is an influencer?

External links

• The Acton Institute official website
• The Acton Institute on Facebook
• The Acton Institute on X
• The Acton Institute on YouTube