Donors Capital Fund (DCF) is a nonprofit Virginia-based donor-advised charity that distributes grants to politically conservative and libertarian organizations. Donors Capital Fund is associated with Donors Trust, another donor-advised fund.
Donors Capital Fund was established in 1999. According to the organization, it was "formed to safeguard the charitable intent of donors who are dedicated to the ideals of limited government, personal responsibility, and free enterprise." Donors Capital Fund assures contributors that their donations will only support "a class of public charities firmly committed to liberty." Grants from Donors Capital Fund are based on the preferences of the original contributor.
Donors Capital Fund is associated with Donors Trust. Donors Trust refers clients to Donors Capital Fund if the client plans to maintain a balance of US$1 million or more.
Donors Capital Fund files with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. Whitney Ball, the former president of the Donors Capital Fund, was prior to Donors Capital Fund the executive director of the nonprofit Philanthropy Roundtable and director of development at the Cato Institute, a Washington, D.C. libertarian think tank. Ball was also president and chief executive officer of Donors Trust and a member of the board of directors of Donors Trust and the State Policy Network. As of 2015, the board of directors of Donors Capital Fund includes Ball, Arthur C. Brooks, and Steven Hayward.
Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund distributed nearly US$120 million to more than 100 groups skeptical of global warming between 2002 and 2010, according to the The Guardian. According to a 2013 analysis by Drexel University environmental sociologist Robert Brulle, Donors Trust and Donors Capital Fund combined were the largest funders of what he calls "the climate change countermovement" in the US between 2003 and 2013. According to Brulle, "by 2009, about one-quarter of the funding of the climate countermovement is from the Donors Trust, Donors Capital Fund."
In 2008, Donors Capital Fund granted US$17.7 million to the Clarion Fund, now the Clarion Project, a nonprofit organization which educates the U.S. public about the dangers of Islamic extremism. Ball told Salon her organization made the distribution to Clarion based on a client's recommendation.
Donors Capital Fund granted US$192,000 to the Alaska Policy Forum (APF) in the organization's first two years, 2009 and 2010. APF is free-market think tank and a member of the State Policy Network of conservative and libertarian think tanks which focus on state-level policy. The grants from Donors Capital Fund were most of the funds raised by APF in that period. In 2010, Donors Capital Fund granted US$1.75 million to the State Policy Network, US$2 million to Donors Trust, US$2.5 million to the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington, D.C.-based conservative think tank, US$2 million to Citizens Against Government Waste, a Washington, D.C.-based fiscally conservative think tank, US$1.7 million to The Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based conservative think tank, and over 206 other grantees.
