Evergreen Freedom Foundation

Olympia, WA 98507

When is a think tank not a think tank? In the case of the Olympia, Washington based Evergreen Freedom Foundation (EFF), it’s when a group that purports to be public interest policy organization turns out to be a private interest law firm for a few contributors.

Evergreen, which enjoys 501 (c) (3) nonprofit tax status, claims in its literature and on its web site to be a "public policy research organization" – a local think tank claiming support from some 2,500 donors. On it tax returns, Evergreen describes its mission as "educational research and analysis." Newsletters and fundraising mail tout Evergreen’s advice to Washington state legislators on budget and tax issues, reducing growth management regulations, and privatizing public services, including schools. The tidy mission of a public policy group, however, is merely Evergreen’s public face.

In truth, Evergreen has built its revenue base and committed much of its expenses on a seven-year public relations and legal campaign to curb the Washington Education Association’s (WEA) use of dues for political purposes – the country’s most sustained and targeted "paycheck protection" campaign. Much of Evergreen’s work -- and its subsequent expenses and its fundraising – is tied to legal complaints in the courts and in Washington state’s Public Disclosure Commission. Evergreen carries on an agenda driven by its president, former Republican state legislator Bob Williams – an unsuccessful gubernatorial and congressional candidate -- and executed by Evergreen’s staff of active Republican political operatives and insiders.

The "paycheck" crusade has been all-consuming for Evergreen –- and at the same time has provided a formidable fundraising tool. Comparing what Evergreen spent on legal fees and "paycheck" advocacy support from 1997 through 2000, with the remainder of its total expenses, it’s clear that in recent years, more than half of Evergreen’s program expenses went to WEA litigation and "paycheck" advocacy.

At its inception, in the early 1990s Evergreen operated on modest budgets, just $191,803 in revenues in 1993, for instance.1 By 1998, at the peak of national "paycheck protection" activity – the failed California and Oregon "paycheck" ballot initiatives and a sputtering national campaign to pass "paycheck" laws in every state -- the think tank’s revenues had grown to $953,757, with direct public support at $944,711. Legal bills consumed $330,162 in expenses that year – a full third of Evergreen’s program costs – and made up nearly half of the $717,873 Evergreen spent on activities described as "research and analysis and monitoring of issues surrounding individual liberty, citizenship and governance" – activities that clearly support the legal efforts.2

In 1999, the year after the failed 1998 California and Oregon "paycheck protection" ballot initiatives – in a flurry of legal activity by Evergreen – donors turned up in droves, providing direct public support of $1.78 million on revenues of $1.8 million. Several grants paid to Evergreen from 1998 through 2000 were directed to the so-called "Teacher’s Paycheck Protection Project." Evergreen’s legal fees hit nearly $700,000 that year, more than half of the group’s $1.2 million in program expenses, and "individual liberty" activities supporting the "paycheck" drive cost another $300,000-plus.3

As the legal campaign intensified, Evergreen’s "think tank" programs declined. Evergreen has steadily reduced its commitment to other program areas, from 59 percent of its total expenses in 1996 to 25 percent in 1997, 17 percent in 1998, and to a low of 15 percent in 1999.4

All the legal activity gave Washington State Supreme Court Justice Philip A. Talmadge reason to wonder why Evergreen spent such energy getting to the bottom of WEA’s finances – and why the public knows so little about who finances Evergreen’s activities. In a May 2000 opinion in a case initiated by Evergreen against WEA, he said:

"... We know nothing about the EFF. It chooses to utilize the courts for what may be a political agenda, and yet we know nothing regarding the individuals or organizations who make up the EFF or provide financial support to it. Perhaps a healthy dose of 'public disclosur' so vigorously sought by these organizations would be usefully applied to their own activities as well, so the public will know who supports and funds them when they purport to be acting in the public interest."

The response to Judge Talmadge’s musings? It does not come from Evergreen or from Evergreen President Bob Williams, who demures when asked about donors and who notes that the identities of contributors are protected by non-profit laws. The truth is that almost half of Evergreen’s funding between 1996-1999 came from just 11 donors, who gave a total of $1,713,097. In 2000, just a dozen donors provided a full 52 percent of Evergreen’s money. Despite claims of 2,500 smaller donors supporting its work, the bulk of Evergreen’s work is being financed by large contributors; with many large gifts come from conservative foundations.

In fact, foundation tax records show that more than one-third of Evergreen’s support comes from out-of-state foundations -- most of them financed by advocates of anti-public education efforts, including school vouchers, or anti-labor activity including "paycheck protection." Several Evergreen contributors have strong ties to the State Policy Network, the national string of smaller think tanks that promote conservative agendas in their respective states. Evergreen is a SPN member and Evergreen President Bob Williams is on the SPN President’s Advisory Council.

While Evergreen receives a modest amount of foundation support from within the state – the conservative M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust appearing to be its largest Washington state foundation contributor – the list of out-of-state contributors to EFF reads like a "who’s who" in the national voucher and anti-labor movements. Foundation contributors include:

Evergreen has received smaller gifts of $15,000 each from the F.M. Kirby Foundation in 200014 (plus another $15,000 in 2001) and $15,000 from the JM Foundation of New York.15 The Kirby foundation is a major contributor to the National Right to Work Legal Defense Foundation: $185,000 to NRTW from 1998 through 2000). The JM Foundation of New York -- whose associate director Carl Helstrom is chairman of the State Policy Network -- has been identified by the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy as one of the leading conservative groups shaping public policy. NCRP notes that JM has joined groups including the Bradley and Sarah Scaife foundations in funding "extremely aggressive and ideological institutions routinely committed to influencing budget and policy priorities."16

Armed with this kind of firepower, Evergreen is expanding its legal and advocacy campaign over political activity by labor to include other Washington state groups, such as the FireFighters, Central Labor Council and State Employees. In an end-of-year 2001 letter to contributors, Evergreen President Bob Williams vowed to keep up its campaign to protect teachers from having their paychecks "raided ... by the teacher’s union in order to secretly fund union leaders’ political agendas."

Seems Williams and Co. are doing just that with a warchest they’d like to keep secret.

Footnotes

MediaMatters.org
September 6, 2005

Who is Bob Williams, and why is he on TV talking about Hurricane Katrina?

http://mediamatters.org/items/200509070003

On September 6 and 7, numerous national media outlets featured G. Robert "Bob" Williams, president of the Evergreen Freedom Foundation, falsely criticizing Louisiana Gov. Kathleen Babineaux Blanco and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin -- both Democrats -- for their handling of the Hurricane Katrina disaster.

But none of these media outlets disclosed that the Evergreen Freedom Foundation is a conservative think tank that espouses "limited, accountable government" and receives funding from numerous conservative donors. Nor did they make clear how Williams, who was a Washington state legislator during the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens, is qualified to comment on hurricane disaster relief efforts.