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Never use “dark money” as an accounting category, because it implies something the tax records alone do not establish.
Never use “dark money” as an accounting category, because it implies something the tax records alone do not establish.


This is now a much cleaner baseline than the earlier versions: 2019 remains explicitly incomplete, 2020–2023 are conservative minimum reconstructions, and 2024 is our best current auditable snapshot.
 
== Heritage Foundation — Earlier Master Accounting, 2011–2018 ==
 
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Year !! Total Revenue !! Contributions & Grants !! Direct Identifiable Donor Money !! Identified Intermediary Money !! Total Publicly Traced Minimum !! Publicly Unattributed Contribution Revenue !! Minimum Traceability
|-
| 2011 || $72.17M || $65.69M || ≥ $5.07M || ≥ $0.055M || ≥ $5.12M || ≤ $60.57M || ≥ 7.8%
|-
| 2012 || $86.08M || $78.19M || ≥ $4.87M || ≥ $0.035M || ≥ $4.91M || ≤ $73.28M || ≥ 6.3%
|-
| 2013 || $112.69M || $102.17M || ≥ $26.0M || ≥ $0.136M || ≥ $26.14M || ≤ $76.04M || ≥ 25.6%
|-
| 2014 || $96.97M || $94.57M || Incomplete || ≥ $0.186M || ≥ $0.186M || Not meaningfully calculable yet || —
|-
| 2015 || $92.01M || $88.80M || ≥ $0.60M || ≥ $0.093M || ≥ $0.693M || ≤ $88.11M || ≥ 0.8%
|-
| 2016 || $82.21M || $79.08M || ≥ $0.155M || ≥ $0.670M || ≥ $0.825M || ≤ $78.25M || ≥ 1.0%
|-
| 2017 || $82.19M || $76.58M || Incomplete || ≥ $0.037M || Incomplete || Not meaningfully calculable yet || —
|-
| 2018 || $81.06M || $75.56M || ≈ $5.4M identified private-foundation grants || ≥ $1.5M DAF/community-foundation money || ≥ $6.9M || ≤ $68.66M || ≥ 9.1%
|}
 
The IRS-derived contribution figures are exact for these years: $65.69 million in 2011, $78.19 million in 2012, $102.17 million in 2013, $94.57 million in 2014, $88.80 million in 2015, $79.08 million in 2016, $76.58 million in 2017, and $75.56 million in 2018.
 
== Why 2013 jumps to 25.6% ==
 
That is not a typo. Heritage received a $26 million gift from the family of Shelby Cullom Davis in 2013, then the largest gift in Heritage’s history. It was designated for the Institute for International Studies, which was subsequently named for Kathryn and Shelby Cullom Davis.
 
Since Heritage reported $102.17 million in total contributions that year, the single Davis gift represented about 25.4% of all contribution income before counting any Scaife, Bradley, Noble, DeVos, DonorsTrust, or other institutional support.
 
That makes 2013 one of the clearest examples we have found of how Heritage can simultaneously have a broad donor base and still receive a very large portion of one year’s contributions from a single philanthropic family.
 
== 2011 ==
 
Our accumulated direct-foundation ledger contains approximately:
 
{| class="wikitable"
! Direct donor !! Amount identified
|-
| Richard & Helen DeVos Foundation || $2.0M
|-
| Sarah Scaife Foundation || $1.2M
|-
| Herrick Foundation || $1.15M
|-
| Howard Charitable Foundation || $1.0M
|-
| Lillian Wells Foundation || $0.5M
|-
| Bradley Foundation || $0.22M
|}
 
That is approximately $6.07 million, actually somewhat higher than the conservative $5.07 million floor I use in the table. I prefer the lower number until every entry is reconciled against its original 2011 filing.
 
DonorsTrust added roughly $54,600.
 
With $65.69 million in reported contributions, identifiable institutional funding therefore represented at least several percent of Heritage’s contribution base. The exact contribution denominator is from Heritage’s Form 990.
 
== 2012 ==
 
Our reconstructed direct foundation roster includes:
 
{| class="wikitable"
! Direct donor !! Amount identified
|-
| Richard & Helen DeVos || $1.0M
|-
| Herrick || $1.0M
|-
| Howard || $1.0M
|-
| Claude R. Lambe || $650K
|-
| Lillian Wells || $498K
|-
| Sarah Scaife || $400K
|-
| Bradley || $230K
|-
| Roe || $125K
|-
| Searle Freedom Trust || $100K
|-
| Adelson Family Foundation || $100K
|-
| Charles Koch foundation || about $11K
|}
 
So the true direct-foundation minimum is probably above the $4.87M used in the summary table once the full set is reconciled.
 
Heritage reported $78.19 million in contributions that year.
 
== 2013–2018: important warning ==
 
For these years, the public donor databases we used earlier are not equally complete year by year. That means a low traceability percentage in 2015 or 2016 should not be interpreted as evidence that Heritage suddenly stopped receiving foundation money.
 
It mostly means: we have not yet performed the same exhaustive donor-side aggregation for those years that we performed for 2024.
 
This is particularly obvious because a broader Foundation Search reconstruction found more than 4,300 private-foundation grants totaling over $274 million to Heritage from 1998 through 2018.
 
So the tiny 2015–17 minima in the table are artifacts of our current reconstruction, not estimates of Heritage’s actual institutional share.
 
== 2018 is much stronger ==
 
The 2018 donor-side research is better.
 
Foundation Search identified approximately $5.4 million from 292 private-foundation sources to Heritage that year. In addition, more than $1.5 million arrived through donor-advised/community-foundation channels such as Fidelity Charitable, Schwab Charitable, and Chicago Community Trust.
 
Against Heritage’s $75.56 million in contribution income, that gives a publicly traceable institutional floor of roughly:
 
$6.9M / $75.56M = 9.1%.
 
And again, that remains a minimum.
 
== Earlier Period: 1985–2010 ==
 
Here we have good donor-side grant information but an incomplete annual contribution-income denominator. So I would preserve the accounting like this rather than manufacture remainder percentages.
 
{| class="wikitable sortable"
! Year !! Currently Documented Institutional Donor Minimum !! Main Identifiable Sources !! Contribution Total / Remainder Status
|-
| 1985 || ≥ $1.28M || Sarah Scaife, Olin || Contribution denominator needs archival 990/annual report
|-
| 1986 || ≥ $2.08M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage || Same
|-
| 1987 || ≥ $2.38M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage, Koch || Same
|-
| 1988 || ≥ $2.06M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage || Same
|-
| 1989 || ≥ $2.23M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage || Same
|-
| 1990 || ≥ $1.99M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin || Same
|-
| 1991 || ≥ $1.97M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage, Koch || Same
|-
| 1992 || ≥ $2.27M || Sarah Scaife, Scaife Family, Bradley, Olin, Carthage || Same
|-
| 1993 || ≥ $2.94M || Sarah Scaife, Carthage, Bradley, Olin, Scaife Family || Same
|-
| 1994 || ≥ $2.32M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage || Same
|-
| 1995 || ≥ $3.41M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage, Castle Rock || Same
|-
| 1996 || ≥ $2.74M || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Carthage, Lambe || Same
|-
| 1997 || ≥ $2.19M || Bradley, Olin, Sarah Scaife, Lambe, Castle Rock || Same
|-
| 1998 || ≥ $7.73M || Noble, Sarah Scaife, Castle Rock, Bradley, Olin, DeVos || Same
|-
| 1999 || ≥ $5.10M || Noble, Bradley, Sarah Scaife, Olin, Castle Rock || Same
|-
| 2000 || several million || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Noble, Olin, Castle Rock, DeVos || Historical 990 PDF available; needs extraction
|-
| 2001 || several million || Sarah Scaife, Olin, Bradley, Castle Rock, Lambe, DeVos || Same
|-
| 2002 || several million || Sarah Scaife, Bradley, Olin, Noble, Lambe, DeVos || Same
|-
| 2003 || several million || Sarah Scaife, Herrick, Noble, Lambe, Bradley, Olin || Same
|-
| 2004 || ≥ $5M-scale || Noble, Wells, Sarah Scaife, DeVos, Bradley, Lambe, Olin || Same
|-
| 2005 || ≥ $6M-scale || Herrick, Noble, Sarah Scaife, Wells, DeVos, Bradley || Same
|-
| 2006 || ≥ $11M from major donors alone || Howard $5M, Noble $3M, Scaife, DeVos, Herrick, Lambe || Same
|-
| 2007 || ≥ $9M-scale || Howard $5M, Noble $2M, DeVos $1M, others || Same
|-
| 2008 || ≥ $11M-scale || Howard $5M, DeVos $3M, Noble, Scaife, Wells || Same
|-
| 2009 || ≥ $6M-scale || Howard, Herrick, DeVos, Lambe, Scaife, Wells, Marshall Heritage || Same
|-
| 2010 || ≥ $6M-scale || DeVos $3M, Allegheny $1.25M, Howard $1M, Scaife, Wells, Lambe || Historical 990 PDF available; needs extraction
|}
 
The grant-level historical compilation documents the Scaife, Bradley, Olin and other transactions in the 1985–1990s series, including the 1985–89 amounts we reconstructed earlier. A separate contemporary analysis verifies, for example, $5.98 million from Sarah Scaife to Heritage during 1999–2001, plus Roe and Koch/Lambe-network support.
 
== What this earlier table tells us ==
 
Three periods stand out:
 
* '''1985–1997:''' Heritage had a remarkably stable institutional core dominated by Scaife, Bradley, Olin and related foundations, usually producing at least $2–3 million per year in grants that we can presently identify. The actual institutional total was higher because our ledger does not yet include every Noble, Coors, Pew, Murdock, J.M., Davis, McKenna, and smaller-foundation grant.
* '''1998–2005:''' The funding base broadens substantially. Noble re-emerges with multimillion-dollar grants; Castle Rock, DeVos, Lambe, Herrick, Wells and others join or expand.
* '''2006–2010:''' Individual foundation grants become strikingly large. The $5 million Howard grants, $3 million Noble grants, and $3 million DeVos grants show that seven-figure foundation support was no longer exceptional.
 
== The next step is now very specific ==
 
To make the 1985–2010 table truly identical to our 2019–2024 accounting, we need to extract one number from each historical Heritage Form 990:
 
Total contributions received for that year.
 
ProPublica has the actual Form 990 PDFs for 2001–2010, but explicitly says it did not extract the financial fields from those filings. The 1990s and 1980s will require Heritage annual reports, Guidestar/Foundation Center archives, or the historical tax-return collection we identified earlier.
 
Once those denominators are recovered, we can turn rows like:
 
2006 — ≥ $11M identifiable institutional donors
 
into:
 
2006 — $X total contributions | ≥ $11M identified donors | $Y intermediaries | ≤ $Z publicly unattributed | ≥ N% traceable
 
which would give us a continuous comparable series from the Reagan era through Project 2025.
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