Koch Family Foundations

Related Profiles & Research

• Koch Industries
• Koch Industries, Inc. Lobbying Activities
• Koch Family Foundations
• David Koch
• Charles Koch
• Koch Vs. Clean

Background

The Koch Family has spent more than ExxonMobil in order to fund organizations and projects questioning mainstream science behind man-made climate change. Greenpeace has put that total at over $88 million to 80 groups denying climate change since 1997. [1]

The Koch Family Foundations include the David H. Koch Foundation, the Charles G. Koch Charitable Foundation, and the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (disbanded as of 2013), and the Knowledge and Progress Fund.

The Koch brothers — Charles and the late David Koch — are the co-owners of Koch Industries, the largest privately-owned energy company in the United States. According to the Koch Family Foundations website, “Koch family foundations and philanthropy are grounded in the belief that free societies are the greatest generators of social progress, sustainable prosperity and well-being.” David Koch passed away on August 23, 2019. [16]

Other lesser-known Koch foundations include the Koch Cultural Trust (formerly the Kansas Cultural Trust), The Fred and Mary Koch Foundation, and the Charles Koch Institute. [2]

Charles Koch leads the foundation that shares his name, while Charles and his family also sat on the board of the Claude R. Lambe Foundation, which was led by Richard Fink. Charles also leads the Knowledge and Progress Fund, of which Fink is President. 

DeSmog’s special 2012 report, “Fake science, fakexperts, funny finances, free of tax” (PDF), compiled by computer scientist John R. Mashey provides insight into Koch’s funding of the climate change skeptic network at the time. [14] In addition to his own foundation, David H. Koch also served on the boards of the Cato Instute, the Reason Foundation, and the Americans for Prosperity Foundation. [3]

The Center for Media and Democracy’s SourceWatch reports how the Koch Foundations also have ties to DonorsTrust, a “donor-advised fund” which obscures the identity of individual donors. Mother Jones called DonorsTrust “the dark-money ATM of the conservative movement.” According to SourceWatch, the Koch brothers are “are key funders of the right-wing infrastructure, including the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) and the State Policy Network (SPN).” [4], [5] 

A report by the Center for Public Integrity lists a number of DonorsTrust funders that also have ties to the Koch brothers including the Knowledge and Progress Fund, one of the group’s largest known contributors, which donated nearly $9 million from 2005 to 2012. Other contributors known to have donated at least $1 million to DonorsTrust include the Richard and Helen DeVos Foundation, Donald & Paula Smith Family Foundation, Searle Freedom Trust, Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation, and the John M. Olin Foundation. [6]

Koch Family Foundation 990s

In addition to the below documents, see the GreenPeace Polluterwatch project’s archive of Koch Foundation 990 forms here.

David H. Koch Foundation (EIN 48-0926946)

The Koch Family Foundations website describes David Koch as a “passionate believer in free societies,” who had funded “research and education programs that analyze how freedom creates prosperity and advances social progress.” 

990 Forms

Charles G. Koch Foundation (EIN 48-0918408)

990 Forms

Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation (EIN 48-0935563)

* The Claude R. Lambe Charitable foundation disbanded in March, 2013. See their last-filed 2013 Form 990 for details.

990 Forms

Knowledge and Progress Fund (EIN 54-1899251)

990 Forms

Charles Koch Institute (EIN 27-4967732)

The Charles Koch Institute was established in 2011 and is active in the area of professional education, research and training programs for careers in advancing economic freedom. It runs the Koch Internship Program, the Koch Associate Program, and [email protected]. 

According to their website, “Through the Institute’s professional education, research, and training programs, we work to prepare professionals for careers that improve well-being by advancing free societies.” [7]

The Charles Koch Institute’s 2013 990 form (PDF) states that their mission is the “advancement of liberty and economic freedom by educating students in a classroom.” [8]

990 Forms

Fred and Mary Koch Foundation (EIN 48-6113560)

The Fred and Mary Koch Foundation currently supports “the arts, youth development programs and education” in Kansas. [15]

990 Forms

Stance on Climate Change

As reported by Greenpeace, The Koch Family has contributed at least $88,810,770 million to fund organizations and projects questioning mainstream science behind man-made climate change since 1997. [1]

Funding Highlights

The following information is based on a combination of research by Greenpeace USA, data from the Conservative Transparency Project, and original research by DeSmog with data from 1986 to 2018. Some organizations have been excluded, however can be found in the full list in the attached spreadsheet below. [1] 

*Note that values prior to 1998 cannot be independently verified by DeSmog, as original 990 forms are not available. 1997 and prior values are based on Conservative Transparency’s archived data. Those totals can be filtered out in the attached spreadsheet of Koch Foundation Funding by year (.xlsx) if desired.

Koch University Funding

Greenpeace has extensively documented Koch’s funding of American universities. Their most recent data totals over $100M in funding to 364 univerties and colleges. According to Greenpeace’s report titled “Koch Pollution on Campus,” there is “Evidence at schools like George Mason University, Florida State University, Clemson University and Suffolk University fits a familiar pattern: Charles Koch expects a specific return on his large investments.“ [9]

According to SourceWatch, university faculty affiliated with the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) have “consistently condemned the contracts that Charles Koch Foundation has arranged with universities receiving large grants for violating the longstanding principles of academic freedom and shared governance.” [10]

Politico Magazine reported on the Koch’s strategy for funding universities in a 2014 article titled “Charles Koch’s Brain”: [11]

“The plan he and Koch eventually set in motion involved a three-tiered model in which the production, packaging and marketing of ideas was akin to the manufacturing of Lycra (one of Koch Industries’ signature products). Their plan for bringing about a free-market epoch and the business model of Koch Industries—gathering raw materials and refining them into more valuable products consumers desire—were basically one and the same.

 

To facilitate the production of these raw materials, Koch pumped millions of dollars into hundreds of universities. These contributions—which totaled nearly $31 million from 2007 to 2011 alone—have gone to endow professorships, underwrite free-market economics programs and sponsor conferences for libertarian thinkers. (Koch was not a passive investor: When his foundation provided $1.5 million to hire a pair of economics professors at Florida State University, his representatives insisted on a contract with the school that gave them veto power over job candidates.)

 

Step two of the process, Fink once explained in Philanthropy magazine, entailed taking the intellectual output of these academic programs, ideas ‘often unintelligible to the layperson and seemingly unrelated to real-world problems,’ and refining them into a ‘useable form.’

 

This was the domain of the Cato Institute, Mercatus and the dozens of other free-market, antiregulatory policy shops that Charles, David and their foundations have supported. Organizations like these churned out reports, position papers and op-eds arguing for the privatization of Social Security; fingering public employee unions for causing state budget crises; attempting to debunk climate science; and making the case for slashing the welfare system and Medicaid.

 

The third piece of the master plan was mobilizing citizen-activists—or at least creating the illusion of a grass-roots groundswell. These activists would agitate for the same policies the academics had conceptualized and the think tanks had refined into talking points and policy prescriptions. As David Koch once explained, ‘What we needed was a sales force.’”

Koch University Funding

The following data is a combination of data archived by the Conservative Transparency project and original research by DeSmog.

*Note that values prior to 1998 cannot be independently verified by DeSmog, as original 990 forms are not available. 1997 and prior values are based on Conservative Transparency’s archived data. Those totals can be filtered out in the attached spreadsheet of Koch Foundation Funding by year (.xlsx) if desired.