SEARCH TIPS

Search Tips | how to know

Even though this web site is fairly straightforward, a little knowledge is required to get the most out of it.

In general, there are five ways to search the database:

All-in-one website search. This is the search that is shown above. Type in text to search for, such as "Bork", and click the Search button. This search finds all people, recipients, funders, grants that contain the given text.
Recipient grant search. This method turns up all grants to a particular recipient, for all the years entered, from all the included funders. Note that this database is NOT complete. Click here to see the grant data matrix. To use this method you must know the name of the recipient organization whose grants you wish to research. If Cursor has obtained or authored other information about the recipient, there will be a link on the results page (the one that shows the found grants), that you can click to see, such as the following:

Click for more info culled by Media Transparency.

In some cases you will find lots of information (such as the ones on The American Enterprise Institute or The Hudson Institute), many, probably most, recipients have no additional information at this time. Feel free to submit some to us.
3) Advanced Grant Search.
This method lets you choose one Recipient, one Funder, enter a grant purpose, and some contiguous range of years, then find the grants that match those critiera. For example, you could lookup the Grants to the Center for the Study of Popular Culture from the Bradley Foundation for the years 1995-1998.
4) By Person.
Media Transparency has compiled a (rather short) list of people who are the beneficiaries of this foundation largesse, because the foundations themselves don't make grants to individuals. Rather, grants are made to other organizations, such as the Heritage Foundation, which then employes people like William Bennett.
5) By grant purpose.
This is a potentially very useful search tool. Sometimes funders state in their IRS Form 990s the real purpose of a grant in the comment field of their report. This search lets you loop through the grants database and find only those grants whose comment field includes the given text.

Media searches
This field can be useful for finding, for example, how much money the PBS show titled "Think Tank" with Ben Wattenberg gets from the documented funders. You would do this search by entering the words "Think Tank" (without the quotes) in the purpose search.

This method may also be useful for finding direct subsidies of right wing magazines, i.e. search for "Commentary", or "The New Criterion", or "The Public Interest".

Other more generic terms may also yield results in this search, such as looking for terms like "documentary".

University/college searches
Another trick is to search for the text "Bradley Graduate and Post" (which are the first few words of the text "Bradley Graduate and Post-Graduate Fellows..."Search on the first few words, as shown, because sometimes the grant purpose uses a hyphen separating "Post" and "Graduate", and sometimes they don't) which will show the degree to which the Bradley Foundation subsidizes (compromises?) right wing "scholars."

Also try "Bradley Distinguished Scholars Program" or "Bradley Scholar" or just "Bradley".

Another trick is to search for other, peripherally funded organizations, such as the "Collegiate Network", which pays for right wing students and student organizations.

People searches using the purpose field
Direct subsidies to individuals may sometimes be found using this method, i.e. search for "Norman Podhoretz".

Issue searches
Search for "issues" style grants by searching on text such as "tax policy" or "school choice". Another interesting thing is to search for the word "political".

Legal searches
Search on the term "judges" to get just a hint of how these foundations pay to influence how the judical system looks at the world (i.e. economics uber all).

Just for Fun
Try things like "dinner" in the purpose search. That's a whole lotta rubber chicken!

How to find stuff out

People frequently ask us at Media Transparency how they can do the kind of research we do. This page attempts to answer that question.

Researching 501(c)(3)s

Most of the organizations Media Transparency is interested in are legal charities -- that is, under the IRS guidelines, they operate in the public interest, and they and the people/orgs which give them money are able to write off the donations from their taxable incomes.

Form 990s

501(c)(3)'s are required to file an IRS Form 990 each year. It is essentially their tax return. Because of the way charity laws are setup, they are not required to disclose where all their money came from, although they must reveal how they spent it. This means that it is easier to follow money forward that backwards, i.e. if charities make grants to other organizations or people, they must be documented. Further these Form 990s are public information. The trouble is, a foundation is only required by law to provide an inquiring person reports for the past three years. Further, they can require a payment of 15 cents per page. Sometimes this copying fee can add up. Media Transparency has paid the Bradley foundation, for example, $200 for its grant lists.

If a charity refuses to give more than the required information, there are other resources available. As a backstop, the IRS provides a form for requesting the 990 report of a charity (IRS Form 4506-A).

There are other places where you may be able to get this information. In Minnesota, for example, the State Attorney General's Office keeps copies of at least a few of an organization's 990 reports.

The Foundation Center may have some useful information, although I've found the breadth of their reporting to be somewhat shallow, usually giving just one year's 990 in PDF format.

Campaign Contributions

Here is an excellent tool from the FEC (Federal Elections Commission) that lets you, the user, lookup campaign contributions by zip code. An alternative tool lets you lookup contributions by name.

Minnesota-Specific Information

Hennepin County

One interesting tool in Hennepin County Minnesota is a web-based search that allows the visitor to lookup the assessed value and current property tax status of a particular street address. Other counties in other states may have similar web pages.

SEARCHING

About the Data

Find out where the grant data comes from, and what years and philanthropies are included.

How to Search

Information, tips and tricks for making your search more successful

Search

Grants – search grants based on their stated purpose
Recipients – search all grants to a particular recipient
Funders – search for organizations or individuals that are funding grants
People – search for people who benefit from grant funds
Advanced search – specifiy multiple criteria
All-in-one search – search the website and the database at the same time for specific text

MEDIA TRANSPARENCY

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