A Skilled Marketer — and Former U.S. Senator — Will Run Think Tank

Jim DeMint has never run a nonprofit before, but the former U.S. senator has raised money for them and helped them grow. Before running for Congress, Mr. DeMint’s private consulting firm conducted market research for many nonprofits and served as a hospital fundraiser.

As the South Carolina Republican prepares to lead the Heritage Foundation, the wealthiest of America’s conservative think tanks, the 61-year-old Mr. DeMint says he’s glad to be back in the “cause marketing” business.

His task now may be a little more daunting than his nonprofit marketing experience or even his work in the U.S. Senate trying to get long-shot conservatives elected.

His mission at the Heritage Foundation, he says, is to transform Americans’ perceptions of conservative ideas.

Full-Time Advocacy

Mr. DeMint’s jump from the Senate to a nonprofit shocked many political observers.

“What is it about think tanks and their experts that can make them seem more influential in shaping politics than even the U.S. Senate?” wrote Thomas Medvetz, author of Think Tanks in America, in an online essay.

Mr. DeMint has an easy answer to all who have questions about the job switch. He will now be able to advocate full-time for conservative ideas without worrying about campaigns and political entanglements.

“Politics obscures the real ideas,” Mr. DeMint says. “It’s the ideas I believe in, not so much the party or the politics or even the candidates.”

With President Obama’s re-election and Democratic gains in Congress last year, Mr. DeMint says Republican politicians failed to sell conservative ideas despite what he says was an abundance of proof of the administration’s failed policies.

“The Republican Party spent hundreds of millions of dollars saying that they didn’t work,” he says. But, he adds, “perception is reality.”

Another answer to those who questioned his departure from the Senate may be that the new job is likely to pay a lot better than the old one.

He leaves behind a $174,000 Senate salary, and if his predecessor is any standard, he will get a big jump in pay.

Mr. DeMint takes over the reins of the $174-million think tank from Edwin Feulner, who earned $1.2-million in total compensation in 2011. (Mr. DeMint declined to say how much he will be paid.)

Mr. DeMint says that in his Heritage role, he doesn’t plan to push only Republican messages.

Instead, he hopes to forge issue-by-issue alliances with organizations, such as the NAACP, that typically disagree with Heritage.

Mr. DeMint and Ben Jealous, the NAACP president, spoke before a recent “Meet the Press” appearance about cooperating on criminal-justice reform.

“It’s an affirmation that the people of this country can find agreement quicker than its politicians,” Mr. Jealous says. “It’s a good sign to see Jim DeMint move in that direction so quickly after leaving the Senate.”

Forging such new partnerships is not a new tactic for Mr. DeMint, who often riled the GOP by supporting fringe Tea Party candidates. But he also supported the successful campaigns of Sens. Marco Rubio of Florida and Ted Cruz of Texas.

600,000 Members

When his tenure begins in April, Mr. DeMint intends to wield Heritage’s large budget mainly to promote conservative ideas about the best way to boost job creation, revitalize the economy, and impose fiscal restraint on government.

He will be aided in his efforts by the group’s 600,000 members (people who donate $25 or more) who have provided Heritage with steady fundraising growth over the past five years: from $49-million in donations in 2008 to $75-million in 2012.

Two of its biggest benefactors over the years have been Richard Mellon Scaife and Joseph Coors.

Mr. DeMint says he hopes to rebuild the national conservative voice by letting the public know more about the successes that 30 Republican governors and 26 GOP-controlled state legislatures have achieved.

In the states, Heritage has been pushing ideas such as allowing needy students to use government-financed voucher programs, in place in 12 states and Washington, D.C., to pay for tuition at better-performing private schools.

It supports legal changes to lower medical costs by limiting malpractice. And the group backs changing state laws that allow companies to make it mandatory for workers to join labor unions.

Mr. DeMint says he hopes touting those state ideas will push Congress to enact spending restraints to avoid federal financial calamity: “This battle is going to be won from the ground up.”

Charities and Federal Aid

Nonprofits also must adopt more market-based solutions to serve their missions as government funds shrink, he says.

“I’ve worked with organizations that took government money and those that didn’t,” he says. “Those that didn’t take government money were much more connected to contributors.”

Mr. DeMint, whose single mother operated a dance studio out of his boyhood home in Greenville, S.C., won a seat in the House of Representatives in 1988, then jumped to the Senate in 2004 and was re-elected to the job six years later.

June Bradham first met Mr. DeMint while she was working as the executive director at Hilton Head Hospital’s new foundation in 1987.

The hospital grew thanks to a DeMint Group marketing plan. “He is the best strategist I’ve ever met,” says Ms. Bradham, president of Corporate DevelopMint in Charleston, S.C., which started as DeMint Group’s fundraising consulting division.

She says she was not surprised by her friend’s decision to leave the Senate.

“He has never been a real politician,” she says. “At Heritage he’ll be able to move forward the conservative thought he believes in.”

Jim DeMint, incoming president Heritage Foundation

Education: B.S., University of Tennessee; M.B.A., Clemson University

Career highlights: Started and ran the DeMint Group for 15 years before he was elected to the House in 2008

Salary: Declined to disclose

Book he’s reading: Forces for Good: The Six Practices of High-Impact Nonprofits, by Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, in which Heritage’s methods on advocacy are cited as an example for other organizations to follow.