(p 94)
In fact, the Heritage Foundation was born out of two congressional aides' frustration with the more conventional think tank model. One of them, Edwin Feulner Jr, was a Wharton School graduate and Hayek acolyte, with a flair for fund-raising. The other, Paul Weyrich, was a brilliant and fiercely conservative working-class Catholic press aide from Wisconsin, who described himself openly as a "radical" who was "working to overturn the present power structure." The two had become exasperated with by AEI's [American Enterprise Institute] refusal to weigh in on legislative fights until after they were settled, a cautious approach reflecting the older think tank's fear of losing its nonprofit status. Instead, they wanted to create a new sort of action-oriented think tank that would actively lobby members of Congress before decisions were made, take sides in fights, and in every way not just "think" but "do."
Lewis Powell's memo [see Powell memo] awoke the financial angels their project needed. The first of these was Joseph Coors, a scion of the archconservative Colorado-based Coors brewery family. After reading Powell's memo, he was so "stirred up" he sent a letter to his senator, the Colorado Republican Gordon Allot, offering to "invest in conservative causes." Weyrich, who worked for Allott, saw Coor's letter and pounced. He urged the magnate, who seemed to be offering unlimited funds with no strings attached, to come to Washington immediately.
"I do believe I've never met a man as politically naive as Joe Coors," he reportedly said with a chuckle afterward. But Coors was enthralled. Weyrich had talked of being "engaged in a war to preserve the freedom this country was built on...", he told Coors....
(p 95)
Before long, Coors became the first donor to the fledgling conservative think tank that Weyrich and Feuler were launching, the forerunner of the Heritage Foundation, then called the Analysis and Research Association. ... Backed by the first of many multimillionare political ideologues, the Heritage Foundation opened for business in 1973.