a year. Both Tillman and Blankenship say the parting was amicable, but Blankenship notes that the hiring of Tillman – a prodigious fundraiser and keen marketer – as the head of the Institute did mark a transition for the group. He adds that he still “feels like a proud father of the organization.”
“I don’t think any founder of an organization is going to be perfectly happy with the direction that it goes, but I’m very proud of what they’re doing,” Blankenship says. “I know that when two elephants fight, there’s a lot of grass that gets destroyed. But the conservative movement values itself on being that idea generator. So there’s going to be disagreements and elephant fights and things like that. That’s healthy,” he says.
Blankenship applauds Tillman for his efforts in making the Institute more visible. Since Tillman signed on, the organization’s total appearances in print, radio and television have jumped from 51 in 2007 to more than 620 in 2009, according to the Institute. In only the first half of 2010, the Institute has been mentioned or featured more than 420 times.
What that’s worth is debatable. “There’s that adage that a certain amount of success is just showing up, and they have the ability to do that more than someone fighting the good fight,” Lindall says. “It’s not any surprise that they are cited disproportionately.”
Indeed, the Institute has resources. Tillman has watched the Institute’s revenues jump from about $341,500 in 2007, the year he joined, to about $1.54 million in 2009. This year, the Institute’s budget sits at $2.2 million, Tillman says.
Tillman declined to reveal the Institute’s revenue sources. As a nonprofit, the organization is legally exempt from disclosing its donors, but Lindall says the Institute’s failure to do so is ironic, considering the group’s advocacy of government transparency. He says the Institute, as a tax-exempt nonprofit, derives benefit while individuals continue to pay taxes. “Yet we don’t know who funds them and that’s just one of many unanswered question.”
In its 2009 annual report, still in draft form, the Institute says that less than 1 percent of its revenue comes from corporate donors, with about 68 percent coming from individuals and about 28 percent from foundations. The rest is categorized as miscellaneous.
But resources only go so far. “Part of it is being there and having a presence and being aware of you. Part of it is making the case,” says Kent Redfield, political science professor at the University of Illinois Springfield. “You can lose credibility very quickly if people believe you’re just cherry picking facts or putting positions out there without any kind of analytical capacity behind them.”
“To establish a reputation as somebody who does good research on policy areas … takes more time than having a set of principles and having an ideological position,” Redfield says. “That’s really the challenge for the Policy Institute.”
Contact Rachel Wells at [email protected].
