About

The Sarah Scaife Foundation is one of a trio of foundations controlled by billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife, an indirect heir to the fortune of his great uncle, Andrew Mellon. Set up by Richard’s mother, Sarah, the Scaife family’s foundations were relatively apolitical until Sarah’s death in 1965, when Richard assumed greater control of the family fortune and was able to direct his wealth toward the growth of a conservative infrastructure. By 1976, over half of the Scaife foundations’ grant money went to conservative organizations and causes, a proportion that only grew. Scaife has been credited with helping to “fund the creation of the modern conservative movement in America” through his foundations and personal wealth, and was particularly influential in the 1990s. Scaife is now also a minority owner of the conservative publication Newsmax and vice chairman of the board of the Heritage Foundation.

With over $255 million in assets as of 2010, the Sarah Scaife Foundation is the largest of the foundations currently under Scaife’s control, giving away over $14 million in 2010. According to its annual reports, its wealth is “primarily directed toward public policy programs that address major domestic and international issues.” In practice, the programs that benefit from the foundation’s money usually endeavor to turn public policy rightward. The foundation’s biggest recipient over the last several decades has been the Heritage Foundation, which got over $23 million between 1985 and 2010 and probably much more in years prior to available records. Runners-up include the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Hoover Institution, all prominent right-wing think tanks. The American Enterprise Institute has gotten nearly $9 million, and the Media Research Center has gotten over $4 million. Millions have also gone to organizations like FreedomWorks, the Cato Institute, and the Center for Immigration Studies.

Scaife also chairs the Carthage Foundation and the Allegheny Foundation. The Carthage Foundation has a similar mission to that of the Sarah Scaife Foundation but a much smaller endowment, giving away just $602,500 in 2010. The Allegheny Foundation claims that it “concentrates its giving in the Western Pennsylvania area and confines most of its grant awards to programs for historic preservation, civic development and education,” but a significant proportion of its 2010 grants went to explicitly conservative outfits like the Bill of Rights Institute, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Young America’s Foundation, and the Heritage Foundation, with Heritage scoring $1.25 million of the total $5.2 million Allegheny gave away that year.

A fourth Scaife fund, the Scaife Family Foundation, is headed by Richard’s daughter, Jennie Scaife. In 2003, she moved her foundation from the Pittsburgh headquarters shared by her father’s three foundations to West Palm Beach, Florida. Under Jennie’s guidance, the Scaife Family Foundation has pulled back on the amount it gives to conservative causes, ceasing donations to the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute in the late ‘90s, for example, and focusing on drug treatment programs, education, and animal welfare. Yet it hasn’t sworn off funding certain elements of the right-wing agenda, having donated in recent years to anti-immigration groups like the Center for Immigration Studies, ProEnglish, Numbers USA. Robert’s son, David Scaife, also chairs his own foundation, which he started with a childhood friend. The DSF Charitable Foundation, begun in 2000, generally avoids political ventures, preferring to donate to health and education and to initiatives in Western Pennsylvania. David Scaife’s wife and mother (who is divorced from his father) are also on the foundation’s board.