Lawson bader

Birthday: August 29, 1966

Hometown: San Francisco Bay Area

Primary residence: Washington, DC

Current role: President & CEO of DonorsTrust / Donors Capital Fund 

Net worth: Unknown

Compensation: 2022 salary: $387,750; other = $59,493

Education:

• BA in political science & government from Wheaton College (1988) 

• MA in government & public policy from Johns Hopkins University (2000) 

Board memberships, affiliations, and roles:

• Board member of the State Policy Network (October 2016-present)

  • DonorsTrust is an affiliate organization of the State Policy Network

• Board member of the Atlas Network (September 2016-present)

  • Brad Lips (CEO of the Atlas Network) is on the board of Donors Capital Fund  

• Board member of Oakseed Ministries International

Past roles: 

• Member of the Forbes Nonprofit Council (May 2019-June 2021)

• Contributor to Kiplinger

• President of the Competitive Enterprise Institute (October 2012-November 2015) 

  • Launched CEI radio show: RealClear Hour with Bill Frezza

• Vice President of the Mercatus Center at George Mason University 

  • The Mercatus Center is part of the State Policy Network

• President of 2019 Antigua Forum at the Universidad Francisco Marroquín (January 2018-January 2019)

• Member of Board of Directors of Oakseed Ministries International (September 2016-August 2022)

• Member of Board of Directors of Solers (January 2017-July 2019)

• Weekly columnist with Human Events

• Manager of government relations at SRI International 

• Legislative analyst/paralegal at Pierson, Semmes, and Finley 

• Special assistant at the US Senate Committee on Veterans Affairs 

Fun facts: 

• Bader is active on X at the account @LibertynKilts. His bio reads: “Kilted traveler, whiskied up irreverent Presbyterian, single engine cloud chaser with authority issues.”

Lawson Bader operates at the helm of DonorsTrust, known as the “dark money ATM of the conservative movement.” According to Bader’s LinkedIn, he manages “over $1.4 billion in assets and distributes over $150 million in grants annually.” He is also “responsible for cultivating and maintaining relationships with donors, grantees, partners, and stakeholders” and supporting and collaborating “with other organizations advancing the principles of a free society such as the State Policy Network and the Atlas Network,” where he serves as a board member. 

As a donor-advised fund, DonorsTrust manages the charitable donations of its clients, keeping the identities of original donors anonymous. Donors technically don’t have the final say in where their money goes, but in practice, they dictate the destination of donations. In return for ceding this control, they receive bigger tax write-offs than if they were to donate through family foundations because of DonorsTrust’s status as a 501(c)(3) public charity. According to Mother Jones, “Rich folks can give to Donors Trust and rest easy knowing that their millions will continue bankrolling the conservative movement long into the future, even after their dea​​th. They don’t have to worry that, after they die, their heirs and trustees will use their bucks for causes they would never support.” 

In 2022, DonorsTrust redirected $134 million to right-wing groups. According to the Center for Media and Democracy (CMD), DonorsTrust’s sister organization, Donors Capital Fund, is losing funds and as of November 2023 only had $9.1 million in assets. In 2022, DonorsTrust’s largest grant of $9 million went to Consumers’ Research, which Will Hild, another alleged climate criminal, leads. CMD published all of DonorsTrust’s 2022 grantmaking to climate deniers, right-wing media, right-wing litigation, the State Policy Network, and other categories here. DonorsTrust is also the largest known funder of American white nationalist hate groups. 

In 2021, DonorsTrust received two donations of over $425 million, which were some of the largest donations to a group with political connections. The donors of these massive gifts remained anonymous. Hailey Fuchs for Politico said these donations were “just the latest and one of the more remarkable illustrations of the opaque financing of the current political ecosystem.” DonorsTrust then funneled this money to various conservative groups, including $17.1 million to The 85 Fund, founded by Leonard Leo, the conservative donor and co-chairman of the Federalist Society who significantly influenced Donald Trump’s Supreme Court nomination process. 

Between 2014 and 2020, DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund gave $20,557,882 to organizations that promoted climate denial. During this period, the two funds together funneled $13.3 million to the Heartland Institute. 

Bader has long been engaged in alleged climate criminal activities. In 2014, Bader signed a Cornwall Alliance declaration called “Protect the Poor: Ten Reasons to Oppose Harmful Climate Change Policies.” Some key quotes from the declaration, highlighted by DeSmog, are: 

• “Earth’s temperature naturally warms and cools cyclically throughout time, and warmer periods are typically more conducive to human thriving than colder periods.”

• “While human addition of greenhouse gases, particularly carbon dioxide (CO2), to the atmosphere may slightly raise atmospheric temperatures, observational studies indicate that the climate system responds more in ways that suppress than in ways that amplify CO2’s effect on temperature, implying a relatively small and benign rather than large and dangerous warming effect.”

• “Rising atmospheric CO2 benefits all life on Earth by improving plant growth and crop yields, making food more abundant and affordable, helping the poor most of all.”

• “Abundant, affordable, reliable energy, most of it now and in the foreseeable future provided by burning fossil fuels, which are the primary source of CO2 emissions, is indispensable to lifting and keeping people out of poverty.”

• “Mandatory reductions in CO2 emissions, pursued to prevent dangerous global warming, would have little or no discernible impact on global temperatures, but would greatly increase the price of energy and therefore of everything else. Such policies would put more people at greater risk than the warming they are intended to prevent, because they would slow, stop, or even reverse the economic growth that enables people to adapt to all climates. They would also harm the poor more than the wealthy, and would harm them more than the small amount of warming they might prevent.”

Lawson Bader’s total compensation in 2022 was $447,243. Working as a foot soldier in the Koch-funded network provides job security and economic affluence.

DonorsTrust receives donations and redirects them to think tanks, trade associations, and advocacy organizations that work to prevent climate policy and spread disinformation through right-wing media. 

While elected officials are beholden to their constituents and private companies cater to their shareholders, philanthropies have greater flexibility. The Yale Environment Review wrote that though it is impossible to tell if Koch and ExxonMobil continue to fund the climate countermovement and misinformation campaigns, in the same time period that “Koch and Exxon’s public contributions dwindled, contributions to DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund increased.” This leads one to believe that DonorsTrust and other donor-advised funds continue to do the fossil fuel industry's bidding. 

In previous efforts to increase the transparency of conservative philanthropy, Bader has been written about in publications like DeSmog and LittleSis. DonorsTrust was listed as the top nonprofit climate denial funder from 2014 to 2020 by the Center for Media and Democracy. 

• “When the American philanthropic sector does less, the government does more. This means that the voluntary becomes involuntary” – Bader, 2022