Conservative Groups Turn to Grass-Roots Efforts to Seek New Donors

Fund raising is particularly thorny for conservative groups because many of their contributors are either elderly people living on fixed incomes or stock dividends, or members of financial firms — all people who have suffered in the recession.

For instance, the Heritage Foundation, a think tank in Washington, reports that the average age of its donors is 72.

What’s more, says James Piereson, president of the William E. Simon Foundation, in New York, if the federal government includes nonprofit groups in an economic-stimulus deal, as Congress is considering, or funnels money to state governments that will pay for direct services offered by charities, conservative groups probably will be left out. “Most of them wouldn’t take government money if it were offered, anyway,” he notes.

Already, some groups have trimmed their staffs or slashed expenses to deal with budget shortfalls. Some groups have tried a different tack. The Cato Institute has added a new position to deal with pressing budget and staffing issues, in the hope that a new hire could devise ways for the organization to use money more wisely.

Other groups have decided to step up their fund-raising appeals. The Capital Research Center, in Washington, which bills itself as a watchdog of liberal advocacy organizations, says that it will try to combat a 15-percent decrease in donations from individuals and a smaller percentage drop in foundation grants by sending more direct-mail solicitations.

Building Influence

Groups that had devised strategies long before the Democrats took over the White House might be in a better position to weather the changes in politics and the economy, says John Von Kannon, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation. His group’s ideas were well received in the White House during the administrations of President Reagan and both Presidents Bush.

But when Democrats regained control of Congress in 2006, Heritage decided to change its fund-raising approach and will do so again this year. Heritage started new programs not only to raise money, but also to make sure its ideas would receive backing from influential people outside of government.

By creating stronger ties with conservative voters across the country, Heritage hoped to both raise more money and start new grass-roots efforts to energize the movement. By generating buzz outside Washington, the group’s leaders reasoned, Heritage’s members could nudge Washington more toward the right in the long term.

“Republicans had stopped acting like conservatives by 2006. You could see it in the Medicare prescription drug plan, campaign finance reform, and other actions in Congress,” Mr. Von Kannon says. “We decided that dealing with Congress wasn’t being effective. We focused on getting the message outside of the Capitol.”

So far, the tactic has worked. In 2007, Heritage set a goal of garnering one million new donor members to add to the 281,000 already on its rolls. So far, the group has added 112,000 donors to the list, and it took in $57-million in donations and grants — $7-million more than it had expected — last year.

To help promote its message to prospective donors, Heritage also created advocacy programs in 10 major policy areas, including the overhaul of federal entitlement programs like Social Security, and energy and the environment, and made 10-year plans for accomplishments to be made in each one. Members are encouraged to donate to one or more policy areas, and to monitor the group’s progress in researching each of them through Heritage Foundation Web pages.

Heritage has also jump-started its efforts to woo younger supporters: It recently upgraded its Web page, it started pages on Twitter and Facebook, and it regularly sends feeds of conservative speeches and news reports to YouTube. The group’s e-mail list (which is not the same as its roster of donors) now numbers more than 200,000, up from only a few thousand people two years ago. Most people on the list are age 40 or younger.

But such moves might not make much difference in organizations’ fiscal health, some observers say. “I’m not sure a younger generation of conservatives will have the same kind of passion,” says Stanley Katz, a professor at Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, where he teaches a course on nonprofit groups and philanthropy.

“But that may not be necessary. You only need 10 billionaires,” he says. “And there will be 10 conservative billionaires.”