{"id":2852167,"date":"2025-09-16T05:52:21","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T10:52:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/?p=2852167"},"modified":"2025-09-23T02:48:52","modified_gmt":"2025-09-23T07:48:52","slug":"quincy-institute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/quincy-institute\/","title":{"rendered":"Do US think tanks have a financial disclosure problem?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The U.S. think tank sector has a transparency problem. North American think tanks (alongside Latin America) are the least transparent of any region, according to the On Think Tanks 2025 State of the Sector Report. Whereas 67% of Asian think tanks and 58% of African think tanks that responded to the survey disclose their funding sources, North America has a disclosure rate of only 35%.<\/span><\/p>\n

Download the On Think Tanks State of the Sector Report 2025<\/a><\/p>\n

This builds on a Quincy Institute <\/span>study<\/span><\/a> on think tanks that I helped co-author, which found that 18 of the top 50 think tanks in the U.S. do not disclose any information about their funding sources. A plurality of think tanks are only partially transparent, meaning they anonymise donors, do not disclose funding amounts, and\/or release donor lists irregularly.<\/span><\/p>\n

In some cases, there could be perfectly legitimate reasons for think tanks operating in authoritarian environments to be concerned about lawfare from financial disclosures. Most North American think tanks have no such excuse. Instead, these results demonstrate the degree to which donor opacity has become embedded in the U.S. think tank sector.<\/span><\/p>\n

One reason that many think tanks in the U.S. are reluctant to disclose is that they are heavily reliant on special interests. The top 50 American think tanks <\/span>received<\/span><\/a> at least $110 million from foreign governments and $35 million from defence contractors in the past 5 years. Despite positioning as objective and independent institutions, reliance on special interests can lead to self-censorship and perspective filtering. Researchers Kj\u00f8lv Egeland and Beno\u00eet Pelopidas found in a <\/span>study<\/span><\/a> of think tanks that \u201cthe most generous funders exercise significant influence on the evolution of the foreign policy marketplace of ideas by affecting which questions are asked and which expert milieus are enabled to thrive.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Transparency can invite scrutiny, yes, but in a healthy democracy, that is the point of transparency. It can help the public, media, and lawmakers understand the values of a think tank. Thomas Medvetz suggests this in his book <\/span>Think Tanks in America<\/span><\/i>: \u201cWhy not define a think tank in terms of its dependence on the very same institutions from which it is usually described as independent? After all, the vast majority of organisations labelled as think tanks typically rely on a patchwork of other outfits \u2014 for example, private foundations, government agencies, activist networks, and business corporations \u2014 for donations and other forms of material support, such as research contracts.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

This comes at a time when U.S. government funding of think tanks is retreating. In March, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced that he would be cancelling 83% of USAID\u2019s programs and that the State Department would absorb the remaining initiatives. The decision impacted think tanks worldwide that rely on USAID funding for policy research.\u00a0<\/span>USAID funded all kinds of research organisations,\u00a0from<\/a>\u00a0CASE Ukraine, a Ukrainian-based economic reform think tank, to Accountability Lab, an open government network that noted a\u00a0drop<\/a> of about 60% in its organisational budget in Pakistan after the cuts.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

The Trump administration has also withheld funds from the National Endowment for Democracy, another government-funded organisation that supports think tanks around the world.\u00a0<\/span>NED is currently\u00a0suing<\/a> the US government, claiming it wrongfully denied the organisation $167 million in already obligated funds.<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Many think tanks will undoubtedly seek funding elsewhere to fill the gaps, particularly from private companies and foreign governments willing to invest millions of dollars with the intention of influencing the research of think tanks. Those sources will come with strings attached, spoken or unspoken. It\u2019s up to the think tanks themselves to be forthcoming about those ties.<\/span><\/p>\n

What I witnessed at the On Think Tanks conference in Johannesburg<\/a> gave me optimism that this could change.<\/span><\/p>\n

First, North American think tanks can follow the transparent lead of the sector in Europe, Asia, and Africa. South Africa\u2019s African Centre for Evidence <\/span>discloses<\/span><\/a> all its funders and the amounts they provide. So does India\u2019s <\/span>Centre for Policy Research<\/span><\/a>. Robin Niblett, director of Chatham House, noted in a 2018 speech that \u201cThe more think-tanks seek to extend the scope of their influence beyond elites in an era of politically awakened societies, the more they will need to be transparent about their funding sources and ensure appropriate forms of governance consistent with their missions.\u201d This type of transparency enhances the research efficacy of think tanks and should be an industry standard.<\/span><\/p>\n

At the On Think Tanks conference, a group of think tankers got together to discuss what that industry standard could look like. More on this later, but I was inspired by the conversations around how think tanks could adopt a policy of <\/span>funding transparency, research integrity, methodological transparency, regular reporting, conflict of interest disclosure, and adherence to regulatory frameworks, among other items.\u00a0<\/span>The problem, as we see it, is that. In contrast, journalists look to standardised codes created by organisations such as the Society for Professional Journalists<\/a> for guidance on ethics; no such equivalent exists in the think tank community.<\/span> This leads to a significant inconsistency in think tank approaches to ethics and independence policies, ranging from those that are<\/span>\u00a0very transparent to \u201cdark money\u201d <\/span>think<\/span> tanks<\/span> that avoid any disclosure at all.<\/span><\/p>\n

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This blog is part of the\u00a0State of the Sector 2025 regional analysis series<\/a>, contributed by our partners to share perspectives from their own contexts.<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The U.S. think tank sector has a transparency problem. North American think tanks (alongside Latin America) are the least transparent of any region, according to the On Think Tanks 2025 State of the Sector Report. Whereas 67% of Asian think tanks and 58% of African think tanks that responded to the survey disclose their funding […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"tags":[200,3727,3600,185,3728],"class_list":["post-2852167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-funding","tag-north-america","tag-state-of-the-sector-report","tag-transparency","tag-usa","article-types-case-study","people-nick-cleveland-stout","series-state-of-the-sector-2025","theme-communications","theme-funding-and-support-think-tanks","theme-understanding-think-tanks"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/30"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2852167"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852167\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2852468,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2852167\/revisions\/2852468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2852167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2852167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}