Fake organizations secretly controlled by corporations are manipulating our political system and reshaping our culture.
It sounds like a conspiracy theory. But what if I told you it’s true?
They’re called corporate front groups: Civil society organizations that are formed, funded, or co-opted by companies to advance their interests while hiding their ties to industry. They can take the form of any type of organization or group found in civil society, such as membership organizations, research institutes, issue advocacy groups, or even social movements. That last type you’ve probably heard referred to as “astroturf” – fake grassroots activism.
I’ve been researching corporate front groups for almost fifteen years, ever since I first stumbled upon them while working on my dissertation. I was studying activism around renewable energy and electricity companies’ efforts to block the passage of renewable energy mandates. I kept coming across activist groups opposing renewable energy – what I thought was a countermovement.
But something seemed off.
That’s when I started digging into the paper trail. These groups had financial ties to the energy industry. Even more interestingly, they didn’t seem to have any actual members. And their addresses were often the same as the companies supporting them, or public affairs and public relations firms serving as an intermediary.
They were basically shell organizations intended to give the impression of broad, public opposition to renewable energy. In reality, they were just an extension of the industry they were protecting.
This discovery sent me on an investigative deep dive to better understand what corporate front groups are, what they do, and how they impact US society.
What are corporate front groups?
The simplest answer is that they’re organizations that advocate for industry or corporate interests in areas where it would be very unpopular or seen as self-interested if companies did it themselves - all done while hiding their industry ties.
Let’s look at an example:
About Us page from the Save Our Species Alliance website, captured by the Wayback Machine on August 30, 2006
The Save Our Species Alliance (SOSA) was founded in 2004 and described itself as a “national grassroots campaign” focused on “updating and improving the federal Endangered Species Act” to “help species recover so they can come off the list.”[i] Their logo featured several types of wildlife and their website showcased a picture of a bald eagle – the poster child of endangered species in the US. By all accounts, it seemed like a legitimate environmental advocacy group.
But when you peel back the layers, a different story emerges.
SOSA’s director was Tim Wigley, who was also Vice President of Pac/West Communications. Before that position, Wigley was president of the Oregon Forest Industries Council, “a Salem-based, statewide trade association representing the interests of Oregon’s forest products industry.”[ii] And before that position, he served as the West Coast Director of Corporate Communications for Georgia-Pacific Corporation, a Koch, Inc. company that is a major forest products producer. If his prior work in the forestry industry doesn’t set off enough alarm bells, many of Pac/West Communications’ clients are major users of forestry products – like builders – as well as other corporate front groups.
Ralph Nader’s Public Citizen, a non-profit consumer advocacy organization, said this about SOSA:
“The Save Our Species Alliance, an entity that sought to gut the Endangered Species Act, is a particularly Orwellian example of a group’s name suggesting the opposite of its true goals.”[iii]
Why does this type of deception work?
If a lumber company lobbied Congress to roll back the Endangered Species Act (ESA), it would be easy to identify the clear conflict of interest. Of course a lumber company would want to weaken or eliminate the ESA. Whenever an endangered species is found in a forest, that forest can’t be harvested for lumber because of ESA protection, which hurts the profits of the lumber industry. Anyone who cares about environmental issues would not take a lumber company’s efforts to change the ESA seriously.
This is where the power of corporate front groups comes in.
An environmental advocacy organization that claims to protect endangered species has a much better chance of being heard if it advocates for changes to the Endangered Species Act than a lumber company would. The conflict of interest is hidden – consumers and lawmakers would need to rely on their knowledge of the ESA and have a deep understanding of how changes to it would impact endangered species’ outcomes to decide whether SOSA’s efforts were legitimate. Unfortunately, most people don’t have that level of expertise.
Additionally, non-profit organizations are one of the most trusted types of institutions in the US. We don’t tend to question their legitimacy – and corporate front groups bank on that.
What comes next?
If you want to learn more about corporate front groups – what they are, what they do, and how they have impacted American culture and politics – you’ve come to the right place!
I started this blog to put my research out into the world in a way that is accessible for those of us without access to expensive academic journals and books. I’ll be writing a combination of posts that do broad overviews on corporate front groups, as well as some deep dives into individual organizations and the impacts they’ve had. I’ll also cover ways we can be savvier about identifying corporate front groups and corporate disinformation campaigns.
I’ve developed a database of more than 300 corporate front groups, and I’m always adding to it. If you know of any organizations that you think might be a front for industry interests, comment below and I’ll take a look.
[i] https://web.archive.org/web/20060830031821/http://www.saveourspeciesalliance.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?page=aboutus
[ii] https://web.archive.org/web/20040901110059/http://www.pacwestcom.com/staff/wigley.htm
[iii] https://www.citizen.org/wp-content/uploads/organizing-astroturf.pdf