Philanthropy Roundtable Founded - Conservative Donor Coordination Infrastructure

In 1987, the Philanthropy Roundtable was founded as a project of the Institute for Educational Affairs, establishing itself as a conservative alternative to the Council on Foundations. The organization would become an independent nonprofit in 1991, serving as a coordination hub for right-wing charitable giving and strategic donor collaboration.

The Roundtable’s mission was to help conservative donors pursue strategic grantmaking activities aimed at issues where philanthropic intervention could have maximum political impact. Through conferences, working groups, publications, and private consultations, the organization connected donors with leaders, scholars, and other donors working toward similar conservative objectives.

This donor coordination infrastructure enabled systematic collaboration between major conservative foundations and wealthy individuals, ensuring that philanthropic resources were deployed strategically rather than scattered across uncoordinated initiatives. The Roundtable facilitated exchange of information about which organizations were most effective, which strategies showed promise, and how donors could coordinate to maximize political impact.

In 1999, the Roundtable would create two donor advised funds - DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund - enabling wealthy donors to funnel money to conservative causes without identifying the funding source. This “dark money” infrastructure became crucial for obscuring the corporate and wealthy elite origins of supposedly grassroots conservative activism.

The Philanthropy Roundtable also advocated for protecting “donor intent” and donor privacy, working to prevent transparency requirements that would reveal the sources of conservative political funding. In 2005, it created the Alliance For Charitable Reform to oppose legislation requiring accreditation for grant-making foundations.

The 1987 founding of the Philanthropy Roundtable represented another layer in the coordinated conservative infrastructure building of the 1970s-1980s. While Heritage, AEI, and Cato developed policy; ALEC created model legislation; Federalist Society built judicial pipelines; and State Policy Network established state-level think tanks - the Philanthropy Roundtable coordinated the funding that sustained this entire ecosystem, ensuring strategic deployment of conservative philanthropic resources for maximum political impact while maintaining donor anonymity.