Friday, a joint study was released by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy. Also contributing were members of the Northeastern University’s School of Journalism. In short, the researchers poured over five years of philanthropic data only to discover that conservative magazines receive less than a quarter of what liberal magazines bring in.
For nonprofit magazines, donations are the main source of revenue. The study focused on 32,422 separate foundation grants between the years 2010 and 2015. Five percent of these grants went to nonprofit magazines, or about $80.1 million. Of that amount, $29.3 million was granted to ideological magazines, ones that are biased to the right or left. Over the five-year period of major foundation grants, only $6.5 million was donated to conservative magazines.
This trend was reflected across the nonprofit spectrum, including organizations which are not publications. On average, liberal organizations receive around 3.4 times more than conservative organizations. That ratio was found by taking the average between the Harvard study, as well as studies done by the Capital Research Center, and the Manhattan Institute. Despite best efforts by conservatives, liberal nonprofits brought in more donations between 2010 and 2015, and it wasn’t even close.
The top five largest foundation grant donors are all left-leaning. They are led by the Roderick MacArthur Foundation, which donated a staggering 29% of the total grants given to magazines in the five year period. Most of these grants were given exclusively to Harper’s Magazine.
The Harvard study focused on foundation grants, these are typically large sums delivered by the charitable arm of major corporations or family trusts. What is not shown are private contributions by individuals. This is where conservatives can make up lost ground. Small donations by a large number of individuals can counter large sums dropped by a small population.
