May 04, 2021
This is Dawn, Dean’s colleague here at CEPR. I just wanted to make sure you saw Dean’s recent BTP post about the New York Post reporter. In a story criticizing the great investigative work by our CEPR colleagues at the Revolving Door Project, he said that CEPR was, and I quote: “ a well-funded and influential left-wing think tank.”
OK, while I’m happy that he thinks we’re influential (we like to think so too), as CEPR’s Development Director I can assure you that (despite my absolute best efforts) we are not “well-funded”, especially if you compare our budgets to some other think tanks. The Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Foundation have budgets between $50 and $80 million with endowments in the hundreds of millions. The Center for American Progress’ budget is close to $50 million. CEPR’s? $2.5 million. And we don’t have an endowment.
As Dean mentioned in his piece there are thousands of Wall Street bankers and Hedge Fund gurus whose expense accounts are larger than our entire budget. Or put another way, the reporter who called us well-funded makes about 25% of our entire budget for salaries. The reporter surely hasn’t been following Dean or he would know not to lie about budget numbers.
Anyhow (as Dean likes to say), it made me think, hmmm, if this guy thinks we’re influential now, what if we really WERE well-funded? I know that a lot of you dear readers are also supporters of CEPR, either directly or though Dean’s Patreon page, but if you aren’t, please help us to become MORE influential AND well-funded by making a donation to CEPR here, or if you haven’t already, make a pledge to Dean on Patreon, here.
I’m sure that Dean would agree with me when I say success is the best revenge. And now back to your regularly scheduled program…
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