The origins of the Heritage Foundation are famous in the halls of the now-sprawling think tank perched on Capitol Hill. While working for a Republican senator in 1971, Paul Weyrich received a careful analysis of the supersonic transport program from the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). But the brief arrived days after the Senate had voted on the issue. He and his friend Edwin Feulner inquired of a friend at AEI to learn that the brief had been intentionally delayed so as not to influence the Senate vote. Weyrich and Feulner were frustrated; the brief would have been helpful. Their frustration fueled efforts to form the Heritage Foundation, which from its beginning made informing congressional decision making central to its mission. In fairness, the skittishness at the American Enterprise Institute at the time was probably warranted: AEI had just weathered a congressional probe of its president's involvement in Senator Barry Goldwater's 1964 presidential campaign, with political activity prohibited among nonprofit organizations. But still, the product of the frustration – the formation of the Heritage Foundation – marked a turning point for think tanks. As their numbers have exploded in the years since, the efforts by think tanks to influence policy making have intensified, just as the explosion in their numbers has made achieving that influence all the more difficult.

I focus in this chapter on how, in a crowded organizational environment, the common interest of think tanks in policy influence translates into success for some think tanks and failure for others.