Heritage Action for America, the conservative social welfare organization that was a main proponent of the push to defund the Affordable Care Act that led to the recent government shutdown, raised $5.9 million in 2012, much of it from donors giving less than $5,000.

The 501(c)(4) group — the political arm of the Heritage Foundation think tank — logged just 11 contributions of $100,000 or more, according to a tax filing obtained by the OpenSecrets News. About 44 percent of Heritage Action’s overall contributions came from individuals or entities giving less than $5,000.

The names of those donors aren’t publicly available since 501(c)(4)s don’t have to disclose them. But the size and number of the gifts lend support to the group’s claim to have grassroots support, at least last year. Of the 108 itemized contributions of more than $5,000 listed in the group’s annual Form 990 filing, 63 were donations of $10,000 or less.

The largest gift was $500,000. That likely was a grant from billionaire industrialists Charles and David Koch, made through a nonprofit trade association linked to them called Freedom Partners.

Heritage and the Shutdown

When Heritage Action was founded in 2010, Edwin Feulner and Michael Needham — the heads of both the Heritage Foundation, which dates back to the Nixon administration, and its new political arm, respectively — wrote in the Wall Street Journal that the older group had been referred to as “the beast” of all think tanks. Now, with the birth of Heritage Action, “our beast added new fangs,” they wrote.

In the same article, Feulner and Needham attested that Heritage Action “will not get involved in electoral politics.” Two years after its founding, though, in 2012, Heritage Action spent more than $200,000 on expenditures directly advocating for or against a dozen candidates.

But Heritage Action’s electoral activities were dwarfed by the political pressure it exerted before and during the recent shutdown. Heritage Action spent much of the last three months promoting a plan to defund Obamacare.

Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) — who would become the face of the shutdown battle — went on a nine-city tour “Defund Obamacare Town Hall Tour” hosted by Heritage Action in August. Cruz was joined by former senator and current Heritage Foundation President Jim DeMint who called on Republicans to defund the health care law in the upcoming budget battles or risk being “replaced.”

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Heritage Action’s strategy involved networks of “Sentinels” around the country who received information and talking points from Heritage and were encouraged to use it in letters to the editor or community meetings. Thousands of prospective Sentinels attended Heritage Action’s “skills clinics” in the months before the shutdown. The aim of the program was to “envelop” Congress in the Heritage message, Heritage Action CEO Needham told Rolling Stone. Thus a lawmaker would be “hearing it from our six lobbyists” while Congress was in session and from “a well-informed Sentinel who is a Tea Party leader” while back in his or her district.

Even as the shutdown stretched into its third week and the public had long soured on the gridlock in the Capitol, Heritage Action was unshakable. Needham praised the House for “pushing to defund this unworkable, unaffordable and unfair law” and lamented that Senate Republicans didn’t have the “determination” of their colleagues in the House.

At the same time, as House GOP lawmakers tried to craft a last-ditch bill to reopen the government and raise the debt ceiling, Heritage Action asserted that a “yes” vote for any bill that didn’t defund Obamacare would be “key voted,” negatively affecting members’ scores on the group’s scorecards.

A Bigger Base Than Many

The attention that Heritage Action got during the shutdown often touched on the group’s possible donors. But — if the group’s pattern in 2012 has continued in 2013 — it has a large donor base compared to other notable nonprofits active in politics. For example, American Action Network‘s latest 990, filed last May, showed the group raising far more money from just 45 donors. AAN’s largest donation, $10.3 million, was nearly twice as much as Heritage Action’s entire 2012 revenues.

FreedomWorks, the other prominent social welfare organization leading the charge to defund Obamacare, received nearly 60 percent of its $15 million in revenues from just four donors in 2012. According to a recent filing also obtained by the OpenSecrets Blog, these donors gave between $1 million and $5 million each. Together, contributions of $5,000 or more made up more than 75 percent of the FreedomWork’s total revenues in 2012.

Heritage Action’s small-donor support makes the $500,000 Freedom Partners-Koch Brothers donation stand out all the more. And that’s not the first time a Koch-linked organization has given money to Heritage Action. A 501(c)(4) organization called Free Enterprise America gave more than $270,000 to Heritage Action in 2011. The now-defunct group was headed by Sean Noble, best known for running other Koch-linked groups like the massive Center to Protect Patient Rights.

Heritage Action’s 990 indicating its 2013 revenues and expenditures isn’t due at the IRS until roughly a year from now, under agency rules that allow 501(c)(4) groups to file such reports as late as 11 months after the end of their fiscal years.

Image: Heritage Foundation president and former Sen. Jim DeMint at a Heritage Action event in Florida in August. (AP Photo/The Tampa Bay Times, Eve Edelheit)



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