The Atlas Foundation seeded dozens of think tanks globally with small grants

Evidence

As Fisher had underscored, “one of the difficulties in setting up an institute is to raise the money in the first place, because usually businessmen don’t know what it’s all about.” Atlas could help through “provision of seed money, which could mean an instant start.” Altas’s first investment was in a French institute—the Institut Economique de Paris. In the US, Fisher put high hopes in John Goodman, a PhD graduate in economics from Columbia. In 1983, with a starting grant of $20,000, Goodman launched the National Center for Policy Analysis (NCPA) in Dallas, Texas. In Latin America, Fisher supported de Soto in establishing ILD. Many other fledgling institutes received seed money from Atlas in that period—in Iceland, Australia, Italy, Spain, Latin and North America, and, in the early 1990s, in Russia, Romania, and the Czech Republic. — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 573

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: A single foundation seeded a third of all market-oriented think tanks; Atlas emerged from the IEA as a deliberate global franchising of think tanks — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 542; Atlas served as the travel broker connecting freedom intellectuals to local think tanks — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 583 (+6 more)

Broader Connections

• Atlas Foundation exported the neoliberal think-tank model worldwide #expands (0.95) — Philip Mirowski & Dieter Plehwe (eds.), The Road from Mont Pèlerin, 1943
• Atlas multinationalized its ideology through translated web platforms capturing talent #expands (0.80) — Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, 567