At the end of 2013 (a year that saw rather unflattering investigative pieces in The Nation (See here and here), the Center for American Progress released a list of its corporate donors. This came largely as a result of John Podesta's move to the White House.
I give them credit for doing this since it is not something many DC think tanks (any other DC think tanks?) do. Transparency is a virtue.
However, I cannot give them credit for the donors from whom they solicit funding.
A good number of the donors are wealthy Democrats, liberal foundations, and unions. That's all par for the course for a "liberal" think tank.
What is worrisome, though, is the number of corporate donors the Center for American Progress has.
CAP just released a list of its 2014 donors. Below, I've included a list of the for-profit donors (including some lobbying firms), a handful of foundations that should raise red flags (Gates and Walton Family Foundations for their education policy advocacy, Peter G. Peterson Foundation for its deficit hawkishness), and foreign entities.
$500,000 - $999,999
Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation
Embassy of United Arab Emirates
Walton Family Foundation
$100,000 to $499,999
American Iron and Steel Institute
Apple Inc.
Blackstone
Citigroup
Deloitte Consulting
Google
Embassy of Japan
Mars Incorporated
Microsoft Corporation
Peter G. Peterson Foundation
Walmart
$50,000 to $99,999
Bank of America
CareFirst BlueCross BlueShield
Daimler
Goldman Sachs
McGraw Hill Financial
National Collegiate Athletic Association
Nordic Council of Ministers
Palantir
PepsiCo
Taipei Economic and Cultural Representative Office in the United States
Time Warner Inc.
Visa Inc.
$5,000 to $49,999
American Beverage Association
The American Express Company
Blue Cross Blue Shield Association
Blue Engine Message and Media
Bright Horizons Family Solutions
BTIG LLC
City of London Corporation
The Coca-Cola Company
Comcast NBCUniversal
CVS Caremark
DeVry Education Group
Dewey Square Group
Discovery Communications
Downey McGrath Group Inc.
DRS Technologies
Ernst & Young
Facebook
Genworth Financial
Gerson Lehrman Group
Health Care Service Corporation
Heather Podesta + Partners
Herbalife Nutrition
HisVision Inc.
The Ickes and Enright Group
Instos Inc.
Japan Bank for International Cooperation
McLarty Associates
Mitsubishi Corporation
Morgan Stanley
Nielsen
Nordic Council of Ministers
NVG LLC
Pearson
PG&E Corporation
Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA)
Quest Diagnostics
Samsung
Singular Inc.
SKDKnickerbocker
Starbucks Coffee Company
Stonecrest Financial
Tata Group of Companies
Turkish Confederation of Businessmen and Industrialists
Wells Fargo
Neera Tanden, CAP's president, defended taking such money:
“We’re proud of our donors,” CAP president Neera Tanden said in an interview. “We’re very diversified. We have a very low percentage of corporate donors. We have a wide panoply of individual and foundation supporters. Given that transparency is a progressive value, we wanted to get our list out there.”
…
Pressed on whether sources of funding could end up coloring the result of research, Tanden replied that the very fact that the group criticizes its own donors shows their money does not influence their research. “We’ve taken support from people, and we’re vocal critics of some of their policy positions,” she said, citing Walmart and defense contractors as examples.
“Our policy proposals and the work we do — whether it’s attacking deregulation of the banks or criticizing defense spending — we take our positions on the merits, and for no other reason,” Tanden said. “CAP is different from many other organizations in that we do not take corporate money for directed research.”
When you criticize your donors, it doesn't absolve you of the taint of the money, it foregrounds why you should have never taken it in the first place.