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Atlas Economic Research Foundation awards $100,000 to Bluegrass Institute

Grant will fund transparency-in-government project

(Bowling Green, Kentucky) — The Atlas Economic Research Foundation announced that the Bowling Green-based Bluegrass Institute for Public Policy Solutions is the only think tank from the United States among its first class of recipients of Dorian & Antony Fisher Venture Grants.

The $100,000 grant will be used to fund a new Web site, the centerpiece of a new initiative by the institute to make Kentucky government more transparent.

“Receiving this grant from the Atlas Economic Research Foundation is exactly the jump start we needed,” said Chris Derry, the institute’s founder and president. “Using the Internet to empower Kentuckians to take back their freedoms is one the most important initiatives we have launched.”

More than 180 think tanks competed for the grants in this program, but only eight, in addition to the Bluegrass Institute, were selected to receive up to $100,000 from Atlas over the next three years:

• Alternate Solutions Institute (Lahore, Pakistan)
• Canadian Constitution Foundation (Calgary, Canada)
• Cathay Institute for Public Affairs (Beijing, China)
• Fundación Ecuador Libre (Guayaquil, Ecuador)
• Fundación F. A. von Hayek (Buenos Aires, Argentina)
• IMANI: Center for Policy and Education (Accra, Ghana)
• Istituto Bruno Leoni (Turin, Italy)
• New Economic School (Tbilisi, Georgia)

“Independent think tanks can play a crucial role to ensure that public-policy debates are not dominated by government insiders,” said Alejandro A. Chafuen, Atlas’s president and CEO. “The Cathay Institute in China is playing an important role by educating people about the virtues of limiting government, so that individual initiative and free enterprise can flourish.”

Atlas established the Fisher Venture Grants program in January 2008 to recognize and assist think tanks that represent “great investments” for the future. Grantees are younger institutes with a track record that suggests a strong potential for improving the climate of ideas among their target audience.

Derry said the transparency project will collaborate with Kentuckians across the state to create a Wikipedia approach to help the institute shine a brighter light on how public institutions, including state government and school districts, are performing.

“This initiative completes our transparency hat trick,” Derry said. “First we put the final roll call of the General Assembly on KentuckyVotes.org. Then we posted the performance metrics for all public schools on KentuckyAlliance org. Now, thanks to Atlas and concerned Kentuckians everywhere, our initiative will hold public-sector leaders accountable for the results their constituents deserve.”

The Fisher Venture Grant program honors the memory of Atlas’s late founders, Sir Antony Fisher and his wife Dorian. The couple established the Atlas Economic Research Foundation, because they believed that investments in emerging think tanks could be extremely cost-effective, especially when complimented with mentoring to further improve those think tanks’ prospects for long-term success.

For this reason, Atlas structured the Dorian and Antony Fisher Venture Grants program to provide funding to think tanks over a three-year term, during which time Atlas will be in frequent contact to help develop plans and to monitor performance. Half of the grant is structured as a “matching program,” providing strong incentives for think tanks to attract new local supporters for their important work.

Founded in the United States in 1981, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation (www.atlasUSA.org) develops and strengthens a worldwide network of independent think tanks.

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For comment, contact Jim Waters, director of policy and communications for the Bluegrass Institute, Kentucky’s free-market think tank. He can be reached at (270) 782-2140 or jwaters@bipps.org.

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