Scaife Foundations

According to its web site, the Allegheny Foundation “concentrates its giving in the Western Pennsylvania area and confines most of its grant awards to programs for historic preservation, civic development, and education.” Allegheny’s most recent annual report (from 2004) lists only two officers: Scaife, chairman, and Mathew A. Groll, executive director. (1) (2)

Carthage “confines most of its grant awards to programs that will address public policy questions concerned with national and international issues.” CF’s 2004 annual report lists Scaife as chairman of the board, R. Daniel McMichael as secretary, Michael W. Gleba as treasurer, Alexis J. Konkol as assistant secretary, and Roger W. Robinson Jr. as assistant treasurer. (1) (3)

The Sarah Scaife Foundation targets “public policy programs that address major domestic and international issues.” Its 2003 annual report lists Scaife as chairman, Michael W. Gleba as executive vice president, Barbara L. Slaney as vice president and treasurer, R. Daniel McMichael as secretary, and Yvonne Marie Bly as assistant treasurer. (1) (4)

A fourth Scaife foundation, the Scaife Family Foundation, is run by Scaife’s two children, David and Jenny, who are reportedly estranged from their father. (7) It awards grants to “support and develop programs that strengthen families, address issues surrounding the health and welfare of women and children, promote animal welfare, and demonstrate the beneficial interaction between humans and animals.” SFF is no longer listed on the main Scaife website (it was as of January 2004). According to its new web site, SFF moved to West Palm Beach, Florida, and its president is Barbara M. Sloan. Its 2003 annual report lists Jennie Scaife as chairman, Beth H. Genter as vice president, and Mary T. Walton as vice president. (5) (6) (7) (22)

Origins and History

Richard Mellon Scaife has been a key figure in conservative politics since the 1960s. According to a 1999 Washington Post report, Scaife’s funding work has been central to the success of the conservative agenda in recent years:

Scaife and his family’s charitable entities have given at least $340 million to conservative causes and institutions—about $620 million in current dollars, adjusted for inflation. The total of Scaife’s giving—to conservatives as well as many other beneficiaries—exceeds $600 million, or $1.4 billion in current dollars, much more than any previous estimate.

In the world of big-time philanthropy, there are many bigger givers. The Ford Foundation gave away $491 million in 1998 alone. But by concentrating his giving on a specific ideological objective for nearly 40 years, and making most of his grants with no strings attached, Scaife’s philanthropy has had a disproportionate impact on the rise of the right, perhaps the biggest story in American politics in the last quarter of the 20th century.

Scaife’s funding activities, reports the Post, began in 1962, when he gave several grants to various organizations, including the American Bar Association’s Fund for Public Education for “education against communism.” Scaife subsequently developed funding relations with the American Enterprise Institute, the Hoover Institution, and Georgetown University’s Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Scaife began funding the Heritage Foundation in 1974, the year the organization was created. He has served as a member of the board of trustees since 1985 and is currently vice chairman. Scaife was pivotal in providing the seed money for this think tank. He gave at least twice as much as beer magnate Joseph Coors (who donated $250,000) during Heritage’s first two years. (8) (11) (14)

Despite an early interest in buying media outlets and funding political campaigns, Scaife early on shifted to funding the leading organizations of the “New Right.” According to some observers, this shift may have been due to Scaife’s lack of success in the publishing world. Scaife bought a variety of newspapers in the 1960s and early 1970s, most of which were in Pennsylvania. His first media purchase was the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, which he bought in 1969 for $5 million, when he was 37. According to the Post, however, it was Scaife’s disillusionment with Richard Nixon that convinced him to devote his energies (and wealth) to organizations. (9) (14)

Reports the Post:

His experience with Nixon, according to several associates, persuaded him to invest his hopes and his money in conservative institutions and ideas, not politicians. Though he has continued to give thousands to political campaigns and political action committees, his interest in electoral politics receded.

Richard M. Larry and R. Daniel McMichael have also played prominent roles in the three foundations. The Washington Post reports that:

Both [Larry and McMichael] developed relationships with the conservative activists who guided Scaife’s philanthropy, and brought system and order to the process of giving the money away along with their own strong beliefs. (9)

Larry, who has served all three Scaife foundations, stepped down as president in 2001 for health reasons. He was a key figure behind the infamous Arkansas Project, the right-wing effort to “uncover” the crimes of President Clinton. Scaife’s involvement in this project ultimately resulted in Scaife being subpoenaed for allegedly tampering with a federal witness. According to the Washington Post, Scaife was so furious about the summons that it nearly led him to fire Larry. (8) (15) (16)

McMichael is listed as secretary of both the Carthage and Sarah Scaife foundations. He is one of the persons credited with helping Scaife overcome his alcoholism in the early 1990s. His areas of responsibility are foreign policy and national security. He is the author of a Scaife-funded novel about a Russian takeover of the United States. (9)

Although Scaife’s foundations claim to not accept proposals from individuals, they provided the seed money for Elliott Abrams’ 1997 book, Faith or Fear, which came out while Abrams was president of the Ethics and Public Policy Center. Both Abrams and Leslie Lenkowsky, then president of the Hudson Institute, approached Scaife about the project. Scaife specified that he would give the project a $175,000 grant if another “Jewish donor or group” also supported the book. The book, which dealt with American Jewry, prompted Scaife to comment to Abrams how surprised he was that this ethnic group identified more with liberals than with conservatives. (8)

The Scaife foundations, along with Olin and other conservative funders, suspended funding for the American Enterprise Institute in 1986 and 1987 because of AEI’s perceived shift to the center under then-head William Baroody. The financial crisis spurred by these foundations eventually forced Baroody to resign. (12) (23)

Some observers have argued that Scaife is prone to conspiracy theories, which might account in part for his support of the Arkansas Project. Scaife told John F. Kennedy Jr., former owner and publisher of George magazine:

Listen, [Clinton] can order people done away with at his will. He’s got the entire federal government behind him. … God, there must be 60 people [associated with Bill Clinton] who have died mysteriously. (8)

Scaife has traditionally shunned the media and typically declines to be interviewed. His few run-ins with the media have been ugly, like for example his notorious interview with Karen Rothmeyer in 1981. When she asked Scaife about his conservative funding practices, he called Rothmeyer a “fucking Communist cunt.” (14)

Reporting on this episode in his 2003 book Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them), liberal comedian Al Franken writes:

[Scaife] went on to tell her that she was ugly and that her teeth were ‘terrible.’ Of Ms. Rothmeyer’s mother, who was not present, he said, ‘She’s ugly, too.’ Sensing that it was time to wrap up the interview, Ms. Rothmeyer thanked Scaife for his time. He bade her farewell with a cheery ‘Don’t look behind you.’ (17)

Scaife has not been shy to use his minor media empire for political ends. According to Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting:

In the final days of the 2000 presidential campaign, Pittsburgh Tribune-Review publisher Richard Mellon Scaife, a longtime conservative activist, ordered all photographs and prominent mentions of Democratic presidential candidate Al Gore removed from the front page of the paper. As a result, the paper’s pre-election Sunday edition had a front page featuring George W. Bush in every campaign-related headline and photograph. A story about a Gore rally held in Pittsburgh, originally slated to run alongside a Bush piece on the front page, was moved to the inside of the paper. According to an account in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Tribune-Review managing editor Robert Fryer ‘tried to dissuade Scaife but was overruled.’ (18) (19)

Funding

According to the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy, Scaife Foundation assets totaled $323,029,669 in 2001. Between 1999 and 2001, Scaife gave $44,800,500. Together, the three Scaife Foundations represent the largest source of conservative foundation giving, followed by the Bradley and Olin foundations. (13)

Top Scaife recipients, according to aggregate totals for the period 1985-2003 produced by Mediatransparency.org: (20)

Organizations

Contact Information

Scaife Foundations
One Oxford Centre
301 Grant Street, Suite 3900
Pittsburgh, PA 15219-6401
Phone: (412) 392-2900
Web: http://www.scaife.com

(2) Allegheny Foundation: 2004 Annual Report
http://www.scaife.com/allegh04.pdf

(3) Carthage Foundation: 2004 Annual Report
http://www.scaife.com/cartha04.pdf

(4) Sarah Scaife Foundation: 2003 Annual Report
http://www.scaife.com/sarah03.pdf

(5) Scaife Family Foundation
http://www.scaifefamily.org/

(6) Scaife Family Foundation: 2003 Annual Report
http://www.scaifefamily.org/family3.pdf

(7) Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, “Scaife’s Foundations,” May 4, 1999

(8) Robert G. Kaiser and Ira Chinoy, “Scaife: Funding Father of the Right,” The Washington Post, May 2, 1999
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050299.htm

(9) Robert G. Kaiser, “Money, Family Name Shaped Scaife,” The Washington Post, May 3, 1999 http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/scaifemain050399.htm

(10) Iver Peterson, “In a Battle of Newspapers, a Conservative Spends Liberally,” The New York Times, December 8, 1997

(11) Heritage Foundation: Board of Trustees
http://www.heritage.org/About/Departments/trustees.cfm

(12) Sally Covington, Moving a Public Policy Agenda: The Strategic Philanthropy of Conservative Foundations, The National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, July 1997

(13) Jeff Krehely, Meaghan House, and Emily Kernan, Axis of Ideology: Conservative Foundations and Public Policy, National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy, March 2004

(14) Karen Rothmeyer, “Citizen Scaife,” Columbia Journalism Review, July/August 1981
http://archives.cjr.org/year/81/4/scaife.asp

(15) James Bennet, “Spotlight Shifts to a Conservative Patron,” The New York Times, April 17, 1998

(16) PittsburghBusiness Times, “Sarah Scaife Foundation head steps down,” May 23, 2001 http://www.bizjournals.com/pittsburgh/stories/2001/05/21/daily20.html

(17) Al Franken, Lies (And the Lying Liars Who Tell Them) (New York: Dutton, 2003) http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0525947647/qid=1070375663/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/103-1853879-8145446

(18) Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting: Fear & Favor 2000: How Power Shapes the News http://www.fair.org/ff2000.html

(19) Dennis B. Roddy, “Tribune-Review's Election Coverage Gores Vice President's Campaign,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, November 8, 2000

(20) Mediatransparency: Aggregated Scaife Grants
http://www.mediatransparency.org/scaifeaggregate.php

(21) People for the American Way: Buying a Movement: Media http://www.pfaw.org/pfaw/general/default.aspx?oid=2058

(22) Internet Archive Wayback Machine: Scaife Homepage, January 28, 2004 http://web.archive.org/web/20040128084744/http://www.scaife.com/

(23) Mediatransparency: American Enterprise Institute Funding http://www.mediatransparency.org/recipientgrants.php?recipientID=19

(24) From the Feeding Trough, cited on Mediatransparency.org http://www.mediatransparency.org/funderprofile.php?funderID=3

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