The top 50 U.S. think tanks have received hundreds of millions of dollars in funding from foreign governments, according to a report by the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft.
Titled Big Ideas and Big Money: Think Tank Funding in America, the report evaluates the transparency of these think tanks using a five-point scoring system. This system, based on five binary questions, assesses how openly think tanks disclose their funding sources.
According to the report, only nine of the top 50 think tanks are fully transparent about their funding. Twenty-three are categorized as partially transparent, while 18 operate as “dark money” organizations, revealing no information about their donors.
From 2019 to 2023, foreign governments and state-owned entities donated over $110 million to these think tanks. The biggest contributors include Gulf states and the UK, which provided millions in funding. Among the recipients, the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institution, and German Marshall Fund received the most foreign funding, with $20.8 million, $17.1 million, and $16.1 million, respectively.
The report also revealed that the U.S. government itself allocated at least $1.49 billion to American think tanks during the same period, with the vast majority ($1.4 billion) directed to the Rand Corporation.
Additionally, leading Pentagon contractors have contributed over $34.7 million to the think tanks included in the study since 2019, further highlighting the influence of private and government funding on these organizations.
