The Heritage Foundation
| The Heritage Foundation | |
 | |
| Basic facts | |
| Location: | Washington, D.C. |
| Type: | 501(c)(3) |
| Top official: | Kevin D. Roberts, President |
| Year founded: | 1973 |
| Website: | Official website |
The Heritage Foundation is a conservative 501(c)(3) nonprofit think tank founded in 1973 and based in Washington, D.C.[1] According to their website, the Heritage Foundation is focused "building an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish."[2]
Background
The Heritage Foundation's initial funding came from Joseph Coors, co-owner of the Coors Brewing Company.[3] Funding from Coors was later augmented by financial support from billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife.[4] Conservative activist Paul Weyrich was its first president. He was followed as president in 1977 by Edwin Feulner Jr. Feulner co-founded the organization with Weyrich; both were previously congressional aides. Feulner had worked as the staff director of the House Republican Study Committee and as a staff assistant to U.S. Congressman Phil Crane.[5]
The think tank was established to develop and propose conservative policy proposals to legislators. According to The Atlantic, the organization occupied a place as one of the most influential conservative think tanks from its founding. The magazine wrote, "It came to occupy a place of special privilege—a quasi-official arm of GOP administrations and Congresses; a sponsor of scholarship and supplier of legislation; a policy base for the party when out of power. Heritage has shaped American public policy in major ways, from Reagan’s missile-defense initiative to Clinton’s welfare reform: Both originated as Heritage proposals."[6]
According to their website, Heritage's mission "is to formulate and promote conservative public policies based on the principles of free enterprise, limited government, individual freedom, traditional American values, and a strong national defense."[7]
Leadership
As of November 2025, the following are listed as leadership on their website:[8]
- Kevin D. Roberts, President
- Steve Chartan, Vice President, Government Relations
- Victoria Coates, Ph.D., Vice President, Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis Institute for National Security and Foreign Policy
- Eric Korsvall, Chief Operating Officer
- John Malcolm, Vice President, Institute for Constitutional Government, Director of Meese Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, and Ed and Sherry Gilbertson Senior Legal Fellow
- Dan Mauler, General Counsel and Secretary
- Rigg Mohler, Vice President, Finance and Accounting
- Derrick Morgan, Executive Vice President
- Andrew Olivastro, Chief Advancement Officer
- Roger Severino, Vice President, Domestic Policy and The Joseph C. and Elizabeth A. Anderlik Fellow
- Mary G. Vought, Vice President, Strategic Communications
- Bridgett G. Wagner, Executive Director, Edwin J. Feulner Institute
Work
As a 501(c)(3) research organization, The Heritage Foundation researches and publishes policy papers. According to Politico, the organization began working with what it called a briefcase test for all of its policy proposals: "[A]ll Heritage reports had to be able to fit into briefcases and be readable in less than an hour. The executive summaries of the reports were even designed to be digested by senators and representatives riding on the Capitol subway on the way to a vote."[9]
Education policies
In 2025, the Heritage Foundation developed and published an educational curriculum called "The Conservative Vision of Education." A summary of the project on their website said, "Now is the time to go on offense in offering a compelling vision about the truth of the human person... America needs students who know and love the good, the true, and the beautiful. It needs students who form real friendships, intellectual friendships, moral friendships. It needs students who love their country, their home, and who are ready to serve—to serve neighbor, country, and God. That’s the conservative vision of education."[10] On November 13, 2025, the Florida Board of Education approved the usage of the curriculum in public schools.[11]
Project 2025
In April 2023, the Heritage Foundation, along with various conservative groups, published Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise.[12] This was the policy paper for the 2025 Presidential Transition Project, also known as Project 2025. The document said of the intended goals: "Project 2025 is more than 50 (and growing) of the nation’s leading conservative organizations joining forces to prepare and seize the day. The axiom goes 'personnel is policy,' and we need a new generation of Americans to answer the call and come to serve... Our goal is to assemble an army of aligned, vetted, trained, and prepared conservatives to go to work on Day One to deconstruct the Administrative State."[13] As a result of their role, Politico's Hannah Roberts wrote that the organization was "the intellectual engine behind the 922-page blueprint that has become the key policy manual for Trump’s second term."[14]
Mandate for Leadership
Heritage's 1981 book of policy analysis, Mandate for Leadership, proposed a set of detailed conservative policies for changing the federal government. The original proposal consisted of 20 volumes and 3,000 pages; it was later published in a condensed version that totaled more than 1,000 pages. The Mandate for Leadership offered specific recommendations on policy, budget and administrative action for all Cabinet departments, as well as agencies to be staffed by political appointees in the incoming conservative administration of President Ronald Reagan (R). Reagan gave a copy to each member of his Cabinet at their first meeting.[1] According to The Atlantic, 60 percent of the document's policy ideas were being implemented by the end of Reagan's first year in office. The Heritage Foundation followed the original document with six editions, released between 1984 and 2005.[6]
Contract with America, 1994
In 1994, Heritage advised Newt Gingrich and other conservatives on the development of the Contract with America, which was credited with helping to produce a Republican majority in Congress. The Contract was a pact of principles that directly challenged both the political status-quo in Washington and many of the ideas at the heart of the Clinton administration. As such, Heritage is often credited with supplying many of the ideas that ultimately proved influential in ending the Democrats' control of Congress in 1994.[1]
Policy Review
Until 2001, The Heritage Foundation published Policy Review, a scholarly public policy journal, which was then acquired by the Hoover Institution.
Townhall.com
Beginning in 1995, The Heritage Foundation published Townhall.com as a conservative web community. The site split with The Heritage Foundation in 2005 to focus more on news reporting from a conservative perspective.[15]
Index of Economic Freedom
In partnership with The Wall Street Journal, Heritage publishes the annual Index of Economic Freedom, which assesses the economics of countries around the world. The Index scores are based on Heritage's perspectives on a country's economic policies; they score each country based on 12 factors related to economics.[16]
Notable endorsements
This section displays endorsements this organization made in elections within Ballotpedia's coverage scope. Know of one we missed? Click here to let us know.
Affiliations and alliances
The Heritage Foundation is affiliated with Heritage Action for America. According to Heritage Foundation's website, Heritage Action uses the "policy solutions developed by The Heritage Foundation and works to translate those into legislative victories."[17]
Finances
The following is a breakdown of The Heritage Foundation's revenues and expenses from 2014 to 2022. The information comes from ProPublica.
| Year | Revenue | Expenses |
|---|---|---|
| 2014 | $97 million | $82.1 million |
| 2015 | $92 million | $80.7 million |
| 2016 | $82.2 million | $81.6 million |
| 2017 | $82.2 million | $85.4 million |
| 2018 | $81 million | $80 million |
| 2019 | $122.9 million | $78 million |
| 2020 | $119.1 million | $78.8 million |
| 2021 | $101.8 million | $85.8 million |
| 2022 | $106.3 million | $93.7 million |
| 2023 | $101 million | $107.7 million |
Noteworthy events
Barred from Republican Study Committee meetings, 2013
In August 2013 it was announced that the Republican Study Committee (RSC), a group of 172 conservative House members, barred Heritage Foundation and Heritage Action employees from attending its weekly meeting in the Capitol. According to the National Journal, the RSC and Heritage initially split over disagreements regarding a July 2013 vote on the farm bill.[18]
Jim DeMint firing
On May 2, 2017, the board of trustees voted unanimously to remove former Sen. Jim DeMint as president of The Heritage Foundation. According to Politico, the decision was based on the board's disapproval of DeMint's decision to shift away from policy proposals toward more political action.[19]
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Heritage Foundation. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
External links
- Heritage Foundation official website
- Heritage Foundation official blog
- Index of Economic Freedom, Heritage Foundation
- Policy Experts: The Inside Guide to Public Policy Experts and Organizations, list of policy experts by topic and location published by The Heritage Foundation.
- Lee Edwards, The Power of Ideas: The Heritage Foundation at 25 Years, authorized history (book) for the period 1973 to 1998. (Chapter 1 online at The New York Times)
- Social media:
- Fact-checking:
- Financial:
- Works by or about:
- Media appearances:
- Media coverage:
Footnotes
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 The Heritage Foundation, "35 years of history," archived April 2, 2013
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Homepage," accessed November 13, 2025
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "The Legacy of Joseph Coors," accessed May 3, 2017
- ↑ The Washington Post, "Scaife: Funding Father of the Right," May 2, 1999
- ↑ The New York Times, "Paul Weyrich, 66, a Conservative Strategist, Dies," December 18, 2008
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 The Atlantic, "The Fall of the Heritage Foundation and the Death of Republican Ideas," September 25, 2013
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Mission," accessed November 13, 2025
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Leadership," accessed November 13, 2025
- ↑ Politico, "How to Make the Heritage Foundation Great Again," May 3, 2017
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "The Conservative Vision of Education," April 2, 2025
- ↑ Tallahassee Democrat, "Florida first in nation to adopt conservative educational plan from Heritage Foundation," November 13, 2025
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Mandate for Leadership Series," accessed November 13, 2025
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Mandate for Leadership: The Conservative Promise," accessed November 13, 2025
- ↑ Politico, "The Heritage Foundation goes from MAGA to MEGA — Make Europe Great Again," November 10, 2025
- ↑ Townhall, "About Us," accessed May 3, 2017
- ↑ The Heritage Foundation, "About The Index," accessed May 3, 2017
- ↑ Heritage Foundation, "Heritage Action for America," accessed November 14, 2025
- ↑ National Journal, "Republican Lawmakers Retaliate Against Heritage Foundation," accessed August 30, 2013
- ↑ Politico, "The real reason Jim DeMint got the boot," May 2, 2017
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