BRADLEY FOUNDATION
"One way to stress the importance of ideas is to recognize and perhaps even reward those who generate them," said Michael Grebe, president and CEO of the conservative Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation. So the foundation, one of the few grant-making foundations not taken over by the left, will award its first set of Bradley Prizes later this year.
"This fall, we will award up to four prizes, each of which will be $250,000," said Grebe. "These are not intended to be lifetime achievement awards but recognize more or less current achievement." Bradley wants to recognize those who produce or disseminate ideas whether they are scholars, journalists, think tankers, or others. "Thinkers and those who implant the ideas," said Grebe.
Grebe said that the foundation looked around but "we didn't seem to find award programs that reward what is in line with our mission statement."
"The Bradley brothers were committed to preserving and defending the tradition of free representative government and private enterprise that has enabled the American nation and, in a larger sense, the entire Western world to flourish intellectually and economically," says Bradley. "The Bradleys believed that the good society is a free society. The Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation is likewise devoted to strengthening American democratic capitalism and the institutions, principles and values that sustain and nurture it. Its programs support limited, competent government; a dynamic marketplace for economic, intellectual, and cultural activity; and a vigorous defense at home and abroad of American ideas and institutions."
The Bradley brothers, successful businessmen from Milwaukee, have passed away, but their philosophy lives on in their foundation. Grebe said that the Bradley Foundation will not suffer the fate of the Ford and so many other foundations, whose original missions have been subverted by leftist trustees. "We are really devoted to honoring the intent of the donors," he said.
"Projects likely to be supported by the foundation will generally share these assumptions," says Bradley. "They will treat free men and women as genuinely self-governing, personally responsible citizens, not as victims or clients. They will aim to restore the intellectual and cultural legitimacy of citizenly common sense, the received wisdom of experience, everyday morality, and personal character, refurbishing their roles as reliable guideposts of everyday life. . . ."
"We are going to ask people to nominate candidates for the prizes and then we will have nine to ten people on the selection committee, three of whom will be from Bradley," said Grebe. "They will make recommendations to the Bradley board. We plan to make our decisions by Labor Day and hold an event in D.C. in September." As part of the process, he said, "We will probably identify five or six subject areas we would like to focus on this year. Perhaps education reform. . . ." The $250,000 awards will come with no strings attached, he said.
Bradley's main activity is giving grants. It currently gives out about $30 million annually. In addition to disbursing funds to large groups such as the Heritage Foundation and the American Enterprise Institute, it gives to many others. "In early July [2002], President George W. Bush visited the foundation-supported Holy Redeemer Institutional Church of God in Christ in Milwaukee's central city to promote his 'compassionate-conservative' domestic agenda, prominently including its school-choice and welfare-reform planks," reported Bradley. "Of course, school choice and welfare reform-and the 'faith-based initiatives' that have grown out of that reform-have long been the prime parts of Bradley's program agenda."
Reported the Hudson Institute on January 8, "Hudson Institute announced today the creation of the Bradley Center for Philanthropy and Civic Renewal. . . . The new center aims to encourage foundations and charitable donors to direct more resources toward support of small, local, often faith-based grassroots associations that are the heart of a vital civil society." So far, Bradley has not tackled issues such as abortion and homosexuality "but that does not preclude our involvement in the future," said Grebe. "We supported CPAC for the first time this year. That happened on my watch."
In the future, said Grebe, "We plan to do more grant-making on defense and foreign-policy issues. We supported the public interest law firms that brought the [racial quota] cases in Michigan." Immigration is also an upcoming subject, he said.
"The Bradleys lived and worked according to several philosophical principles," says the foundation. "They believed that, over time, the consequences of ideas were more decisive than the force of political or economic movements."
The Bradley Foundation may be reached at P.O. Box 510860, Milwaukee, Wis. 53203-0153 (414-291-9915; fax: 414-291-9991; website: www.bradleyfdn.org.).
