Heritage Foundation Founded with Coors Funding

Edwin Feulner and Paul Weyrich founded the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C., with an initial $250,000 grant from Joseph Coors of the Coors Brewing Company. Unlike existing think tanks that prioritized academic research and long publication cycles, Heritage was designed to produce rapid-response policy papers timed to congressional debates. Its first major product, the 1980 "Mandate for Leadership," provided Reagan's transition team with over 2,000 policy recommendations, roughly 60% of which were implemented within his first year.