Mackinac Center For Public Policy - Budget and Finances

Budget and Finances

The Mackinac Center is classified as a 501(c)(3) organization under U.S. Internal Revenue Code which means it is legally limited in the amount of money it can spend on legislative efforts. The institute performs no contract research and does not accept government funding. For revenue, the institute is largely dependent on private contributions. Federal law does not require 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations to disclose the identity of their donors, and in National Association for the Advancement of Colored People v. Alabama the U.S. Supreme Court turned back efforts to force such disclosure by nonprofits, although that case involved the publication of member lists, not donor lists. In 2004 the Michigan Court of Appeals threw out a lawsuit filed against the Mackinac Center by the Michigan Education Association against the Mackinac Center in which one of the remedies sought by the union was a list identifying the Center’s donors. The court ruling was based on the MEA's failure to show actual malice. It did not reach the question of whether the Mackinac Center's donor lists should be made public.

When asked by Detroit’s Metro Times in 1996, the Center’s President Lawrence Reed said: "Our funding sources are primarily foundations … with the rest coming from corporations and individuals," but that "… revealing our contributors would be a tremendous diversion…"

In that year, the Mackinac Center earned only $2,630 (“program sales”); the rest of its revenues came from tax-deductible contributions. Funding from non-profit foundations can be tracked by an examination of the IRS returns they file. From 2002 to 2006, the following conservative and corporate foundations funded the Center:

These contributions total $7,198,700; the remaining revenue for this period (about $14.5 million) was contributed by entities that are not required to file statements with the federal government: individuals and corporations. In Strategic Grantmaking, Foundations and the School Privatization Movement, Richard Cohen estimates that one-half to two-thirds of all corporate grantmaking is: “made through the CEO’s office or the marketing department, for which there is no public disclosure requirement.” In 2006 the Center’s revenues totaled $2,711,545. Its funding has grown substantially over the years, from just over $1.7 million in 1998. Its 2005 payroll reached $1,790,963, with a staff of 40 people.