I recently exchanged correspondence with a researcher writing on the future of “think tanks.” I described for him some of the things going on behind the scenes at Heartland, and new developments that will change the way we operate. Here’s my look at what lies ahead.
A Changing Intellectual Climate
Behind President Clinton’s celebrated admission that “the era of big government is over” was a sea change in academic and public opinion that occurred largely during the past 15 years. When Heartland was started in 1984, our ideas (privatization, tax cuts, deregulation, and school choice, for example) were intensely disliked by most elected officials and almost unknown to business and civic leaders. Today, they form key elements of the campaign platforms of most Republicans and moderate Democrats throughout the country.
How long will the new consensus in favor of conservative and libertarian ideas last? The modern philosophy of statism and collectivism dates to the 1930s, so it lasted a half-century. Frances Fukyama argued in The End of History and the Last Man that the ideological realignment favoring democratic capitalism is permanent. Cynics say the realignment won’t survive the next stock market crash.
A second intellectual trend affecting think tanks is the public’s growing cynicism concerning government’s ability to accomplish worthy objectives. That cynicism, fueled by the conduct of elected officials and the anti-government rhetoric of free-market think tanks, has been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, it is easier to oppose government programs (like welfare) and new initiatives (like the Clinton health care plan) when people fundamentally distrust government. On the other hand, it is more difficult to persuade the public that public policy matters, or that they (or we) can do anything about it.
Changing Funding Patterns
Most of Heartland’s large gifts come from ideologically committed individuals. A growing share of our funding, though, comes from the government affairs departments of corporations with nonpolitical or even liberal CEOs. Government affairs managers recognize the power and influence of think tanks, and they support those with the most potential to help their companies’ bottom lines.
For think tanks, this funding shift has resulted in a growing number of requests for short-term projects and narrowly focused research papers. Government affairs managers, after all, must show “results” for their “investment.” This poses a problem for Heartland, since we operate multi-issue programs such as PolicyFax, Intellectual Ammunition, and our two monthly newspapers on school reform and environment. Those programs cover a lot of ground. Their influence increases over time as elected officials and journalists come to recognize them. Yet corporations are more apt to fund a single-issue policy study or one-time conference–activities that are worthwhile but have only a momentary and incidental impact on public policy.
On the horizon we see another shift in funding. Millions of dollars will become available during the next few decades as baby boomers plan their estates. Often, a donor will earmark a bequest for work on a specific topic or for “bricks and mortar,” rather than general operating expenses. Growing reliance on such endowments brings new management challenges and the risk of complacency . . . but also a badly needed buffer against the results-oriented corporate giver.
Competition and Specialization
It was fashionable a few years ago to predict that specialization and consolidation would be the wave of the future for think tanks. But very little of either has taken place with any success, particularly at the state level. Cato Institute, National Center for Policy Analysis, and The Heritage Foundation–think tanks that address the full array of issues, and are therefore able to act on the requests of donors who want a pet issue addressed–are growing most quickly.
There are economies of scale in think tanks, and the number of ideologically motivated donors who care passionately about a single issue is rather small. At the state level, addressing a variety of issues is essential in order to appeal to the number of donors needed to sustain an organization.
Competition for funding may be intense among beltway organizations, who rely on a small number of foundations for big gifts each year, but there is plenty of room to expand the pool of potential donors. Most potential donors I talk to have never contributed to a think tank and need to be introduced to the whole concept of influencing public policy through research and activism. I firmly believe that the more often someone knocks on the door, the more likely it is to open. Competition helps, rather than hurts, because it legitimizes our efforts.
Changes in Media Coverage
Network television and daily newspapers have dramatically reduced their attention to informed discussion of public policy. They also have lost considerable market share–networks to cable stations, and newspapers to weekly tabloids and television. Talk radio, cable television, and niche publications pick up some of the slack, but they typically reach smaller audiences than did the network news programs they replace.
Five years ago, it was not uncommon for three television crews and seven reporters to cover the release of a Heartland Policy Study. We appeared on the evening news and in the next morning’s newspapers. Today, we often don’t even hold news conferences because so few reporters show up. Newspapers today rely heavily on wire services and syndicated columnists for discussion of public policy issues. Television news is dominated by traffic accidents, violence, and entertainment.
Heartland has responded to changes in media coverage by going around them with our own communication vehicles. Our newspapers, School Reform News and Environment News, provide the news and commentary that regular newspapers systematically ignore. On the Internet, we post the complete texts of our documents, allowing serious students to rely on us for complete information rather than merely entertaining images.
New Information Technologies
Heartland was the second think tank with a presence on the World Wide Web, and the first to use “push technology” to broadcast information directly to the computers of potential customers. We expect Internet-based systems to be a growing part of our outreach, marketing, and order fulfillment efforts.
PolicyFax, our fax-on-demand system, will operate alongside our web site and other methods of electronic communication for many years, perhaps even indefinitely. Historically, advances in information technology have made paper (and hence faxes) more valuable, not less. Until a computer screen is as light and inexpensive as a piece of paper, people will find occasions to prefer faxes over computer disks or CDs.
Use of new information technologies and inexpensive formats for publishing have enabled us to reach more journalists and elected officials, more often, with fewer staff members than we had five or six years ago. Electronic mail allows us to produce policy studies and other publications much faster than in the past, and enables a high-caliber expert such as Dr. Bonner Cohen to write Environment News for us from his office in Washington D.C.
After the End of Big Government
We can look forward to a world in which our ideas are more popular, but not necessarily easier to publicize. The mass media has become a less reliable way to reach large audiences, and the public’s growing cynicism may soon make any discussion of public policy unpopular.
New technologies will continue to reduce the cost of sending our messages to policy makers and the public, while new sources of funding are likely to emerge as corporations discover our influence and baby boomers retire. We’ll be doing more with less, but attempting to reach a more elusive audience.
Your advice on how Heartland can ride future trends, and your insights into those I may have missed, would be greatly appreciated. I am not, after all, a futurist. But we are sure to agree on one thing: The future, like the past, will be full of challenges and opportunities.
