CHARLES KOCH FOUNDATION

OLYMPUS opened an institutional file on the Charles Koch Foundation and Charles Koch Institute because the name sits in the acknowledgments of the field that studies platform governance. It is one of three grantors Kate Klonick’s Yale Law Journal feature on the Facebook Oversight Board names as having funded the research “entirely”; it is a named funder of a New York University center that studies how information spreads across platforms; it sponsored the Techdirt free-speech initiative that defended Section 230; and it paid for two rounds of Arizona State research on “soft law” governance of artificial intelligence. An institution has no Big Five and no Dark Triad, and the unit does not invent them. What a foundation has is an endowment, a board, a filing and a list of fields it chose to pay for, and this file reads those. The finding is the position, not any single grant. The numbers in the front matter are reach, funding insulation and entrenchment; none of them is a judgment of the people who run it.

Institutional Archetype

THE PATRON OF THE CAMPUS — Subject is a private grantmaking foundation whose largest line, in the year this file reads, was a $23.7 million gift to the foundation that serves George Mason University, and whose technology and free-expression money reaches the platform-governance field through law schools, university centers and a handful of research grants. This profile scores the institution’s position, not its trustees.

The archetype is the funder that works through faculty. The Foundation says so itself: its FAQ states “Faculty call the shots,” that scholars’ “freedom to drive their research wherever it may take them” is essential, and that each grant follows the school’s “standard procedures when it comes to hiring, curriculum, peer review” (Charles Koch Foundation, FAQ). It also says it does not lobby, engage in advocacy or support candidates. The structure is therefore indirect by design: a donor sets the field (here, the Foundation’s focus areas of Criminal Justice, Economic Progress, Future of Work, Foreign Policy, Free Speech & Peace, Health Care, Immigration and Liberalism), a university sets the project, and the grant agreement, which the Foundation publishes for its major multi-year university gifts, sets the terms (Charles Koch Foundation; Major Grant Agreements). A patron of this kind has no product and no rule to enforce. What it controls is which research questions have a salary attached.

Mandate & Origin

The Foundation states its mission in one sentence: it “works to ensure all people have the opportunity to live a life of meaning and contribution based on their unique gifts and aptitudes,” and its About page lists the guiding values equal rights, mutual benefit, openness and self-actualization (Charles Koch Foundation, About us). It describes itself as “a member of the Stand Together philanthropic community,” which it defines as “a group of independent organizations with a shared vision,” and says Charles Koch founded the Foundation and serves on its board (Charles Koch Foundation, FAQ). The IRS record shows the legal shape: Charles Koch Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia, EIN 48-0918408, a Section 501(c)(3) private foundation filing Form 990-PF for every year from 2002 to 2024, with a Form 990-T for several years (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer). A second vehicle, Charles Koch Foundation II (EIN 85-4058882), first reports a $115,000,000 contribution in 2020 and spends down from there (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer).

The Institute. The graph carries the pair as one node because the sources do. Kate Klonick’s article credits the “Charles Koch Foundation” and her CV lists the same grant as “Charles Koch Institute, 2019-2022” (Yale Law Journal, 30 Jun 2020; Klonick CV, 19 Aug 2025). The Institute has no separate return in ProPublica’s index, and its own address, charleskochinstitute.org, answers with a permanent redirect to the Stand Together Trust site, which describes itself as supporting social entrepreneurs and names Charles Koch as founder (Stand Together Trust, About). Neil Chilson’s own byline lists him as a senior research fellow for technology and innovation at both Stand Together and the Charles Koch Institute, working on removing “barriers to innovation,” before the Federal Trade Commission posts and his present job as head of AI policy at the Abundance Institute (Law & Economics Center, Neil Chilson).

Who runs it. The Foundation’s About page names Charles G. Koch (chairman and CEO of Koch Industries), Brian Hooks as president of the Foundation and chairman and CEO of Stand Together, and Ryan Stowers as executive director, with more than 15 years at the Foundation, a prior post at the American Enterprise Institute, and seats on the boards of the Bill of Rights Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies (Charles Koch Foundation, About us). The 2024 Form 990-PF lists Stowers as “Executive Director (outgoing 9/8/24),” and the directors Charles G. Koch (chair), Charles Chase Koch (vice chair), Brian Hooks, Dale Gibbens, David L. Robertson, Elizabeth Koch and Derek Johnson (“incoming 10/9/24”), with Weston Edwards as secretary, Henrich Heuer as treasurer and Jonathan Franklin as chief operating officer (ProPublica). Hooks’s prior seat was the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, where the Foundation’s announcement of his appointment (effective 1 July 2014 per its text) says he had been chief operating officer and executive director from 2006, and before that director of Mercatus’s Global Prosperity Initiative and Social Change Project (Charles Koch Foundation, president announcement).

Funding & Backers

The money, from the filing. The 2024 Form 990-PF shows revenue of $208,231, expenses of $67,934,289, total assets of $758,930,141, net assets of $755,640,593 and charitable disbursements of $67,819,528, which is about 8.9 percent of year-end assets (our arithmetic); contributions received were $44,958, and Part XIV line 3a shows $64,073,452 paid during the year with $1,125,000 approved for future payment (ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer; Charles Koch Foundation, 2024 Form 990-PF). The series on ProPublica’s page shows how the endowment moves: contributions received of $52,318,418 in 2021, $263,498 in 2022, $52,606 in 2023 and $44,958 in 2024; charitable disbursements of $148,258,644 in 2019, $108,682,862 in 2020, $99,376,081 in 2021, $69,081,520 in 2022, $77,701,467 in 2023 and $67,819,528 in 2024; total assets of $813,753,220 at the end of 2021 against $758,930,141 at the end of 2024. Officer compensation for 2024 was $579,873, led by the executive director at $358,593 and the chief operating officer at $316,229; the chair and vice chair are listed at $0.

The second vehicle. Charles Koch Foundation II reports $115,000,000 in contributions in 2020 and nothing else that year, net assets of $135,487,042 at the end of 2021, $132,052,512 at the end of 2023 and $79,021,972 at the end of 2024; its charitable disbursements were $10,913,095 in 2023 and $63,018,934 in 2024 (ProPublica, Charles Koch Foundation II). Its officers are the same directors, with Franklin as principal officer and Stowers as executive director.

Who pays the Foundation. The public copy does not name the donors behind the endowment. The Foundation’s site calls the Stand Together community “a group of independent organizations with a shared vision,” and Charles Koch is its founder and board chair; the filing’s contributions line is the only public measure of what comes in, and it is small against what goes out (Charles Koch Foundation, FAQ). The Foundation says it discloses its finances: “We publicly disclose our financial information as a tax-exempt organization,” and that its “support benefits more than 350 programs at over 200 organizations” (Charles Koch Foundation, 990 Forms).

Where the money goes, from the 2024 return. The Part XIV statement lists every grant as general operating support. The largest: George Mason University Foundation $23,675,637 (about 37 percent of the year’s $64,073,452, our arithmetic), Institute for Humane Studies $6,090,000, Utah State University $2,500,000, North Dakota State University Foundation and Alumni Association $2,000,000, SHRM Foundation $1,920,000, New York University $1,138,154, Jobs for the Future $1,200,000, Ohio State University Foundation $1,157,363, Dartmouth College $1,113,401, University of Pittsburgh $988,334, Duke University $884,159, Cornell University $614,000, Harvard University $576,040 and the Center for Growth and Opportunity $500,000; Stanford University received $332,571, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology $114,387, and the Center for Open Science $171,500 (Charles Koch Foundation, 2024 Form 990-PF). The 2022 return lists the Cato Institute at $34,285 for “educational programs,” the Center for Growth and Opportunity at $625,000, and, under expenditure-responsibility reporting, two grants to the Technology Policy Institute ($230,000, program support, 17 December 2019, with $65,000 reported spent by 25 May 2022; and $162,500, general operating support, 11 May 2018, with $90,658 reported spent) (Charles Koch Foundation, 2022 Form 990-PF).

The technology, free-expression and AI rows, from the Foundation’s own pages and recipients.

• Techdirt and Section 230, 2017. On 2 October 2017 the Foundation announced it was sponsoring Techdirt’s free-speech initiative “alongside other foundations and organizations,” wrote that, as policymakers struggle with societal problems, they “must avoid undermining key protections for free speech that foster innovation, like CDA 230’s limited intermediary liability provisions,” and announced that the Charles Koch Institute would support a one-day symposium, “The Future of Speech Online,” hosted by the Center for Democracy & Technology in partnership with the Newseum Institute; it also listed standing requests for proposals on Technology & Innovation (including digital free speech) and Toleration & Free Speech (Charles Koch Foundation, 2 Oct 2017). The post gives no figure. Techdirt’s publisher, Mike Masnick’s Copia Institute, received $100,000 from the Knight Foundation in June 2020 (see below).
• The Oversight Board research, 2019 to 2022. Kate Klonick’s author note: the project “was funded entirely by, individual research grants from the Knight Foundation, Charles Koch Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation,” and “I have never accepted any payment, funding, or support from Facebook” (Yale Law Journal). Her CV lists “Principal Investigator & Individual Grant Recipient” for the Charles Koch Institute, 2019-2022, a June 2022 keynote and a workshop at the Institute for Humane Studies, and a 2022-2023 distinguished fellowship with the IHS Fellowship for the Study of Liberalism and a Free Society (Klonick CV). See Kate Klonick, Knight Foundation and MacArthur Foundation.
• NYU’s Center for Social Media and Politics, 2019. The Foundation’s 10 October 2019 post on the launch of the center says it is funded by “a mix of philanthropies including the Knight Foundation, Charles Koch Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies,” and quotes co-director Jonathan Nagler: “Our primary research goals are to understand how information spreads both within and across digital platforms” (Charles Koch Foundation, 10 Oct 2019). The grant agreement, effective 1 September 2019 and published by the Foundation, commits up to $5,000,000 in total maximum aggregate contributions in annual instalments of roughly $833,000 over six requests (2019 to 2024), for faculty directors Richard Bonneau, Jonathan Nagler and Joshua Tucker, research personnel, operating support and data purchase; its first clause states that “the academic freedom of the University, the Center, and their faculty, students, and staff is critical to the success of the Center’s research” (NYU grant agreement, 2019). See Craig Newmark Philanthropies beside the Hewlett Foundation as the other funders in the Election Integrity Partnership acknowledgments.
• Nebraska Governance and Technology Center, 2020. On 22 September 2020 the Foundation announced $1.3 million, with $3.5 million over four years from the Menard family, for a center in the University of Nebraska’s Colleges of Law, Business and Engineering under founding director Gus Hurwitz; Ryan Stowers is quoted: “Innovation and technology have transformed the way humans live and have expanded opportunities for millions of people” (Charles Koch Foundation, 22 Sep 2020). Three months earlier the Knight Foundation put $250,000 into the same center’s “research and programming” (Knight Foundation, 26 Jun 2020).
• Soft-law governance of AI, Arizona State, 2019 to 2024. Arizona State’s research portal records two projects, both with the Charles Koch Foundation as funder and Gary Marchant of the Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law as principal investigator: “Advancing Soft Law Governance for Artificial Intelligence,” $460,000, 1 September 2019 to 30 June 2022, and “Soft Law Governance of Artificial Intelligence Phase 2,” $430,000, 1 January 2023 to 31 August 2024 (ASU Research, phase 1; ASU Research, phase 2).
• The 2019 and 2020 grant agreements the Foundation publishes. Its Major Grant Agreements page links, among 54 university agreements, the articles “New York University Launches New Center to Study How Information Flows Online” (2019), “New University of Florida Initiative to Examine the Role and Impact of Digital Markets” (2019), “Claremont Graduate University to Expand Computational Justice Lab” (2019) and the 2020 Nebraska center; no AI or Section 230 grant is described as such, and the page itself shows no amounts (the agreements do: the 2019 University of Florida agreement caps contributions at $6,000,000 over its term) (Charles Koch Foundation, Major Grant Agreements).
• The Knight First Amendment Institute. The Foundation’s Free Speech & Peace page names the Knight First Amendment Institute at Columbia University (Jameel Jaffer) among its partners and grantees, with the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding, Berkeley Haas and Scholars at Risk, and states its aim of protecting “freedom of speech, assembly, and conscience”; it lists no online-platform program on that page (Charles Koch Foundation, Free Speech & Peace). The Knight Institute’s 2023 Supreme Court brief in Murthy v. Missouri is in the Knight Foundation file.

The Knight 2020 platform-governance batch, as the peer list. On 26 June 2020 the Knight Foundation announced twenty grants totalling $1.665 million for research on internet governance, including the American Action Forum ($50,000), the Copia Institute ($100,000), the Global Disinformation Index with the Institute for Strategic Dialogue ($30,000), the Heritage Foundation ($75,000), the Mercatus Center at George Mason University ($150,000, “content moderation and intermediary liability, with a focus on soft law”), the Nebraska Governance and Technology Center ($250,000), the Technology Policy Institute ($175,000) and Boston University School of Law ($75,000); the release names no other funder (Benton Institute, reposting the Knight release, 14 Jul 2020; Knight Foundation, 26 Jun 2020). Three of that batch’s grantees also appear on the Koch Foundation’s own records: the Nebraska center (the Foundation’s $1.3 million of September 2020), the Technology Policy Institute (the 2018 and 2019 grants on the 2022 return) and Mercatus through the George Mason University Foundation line (the 2024 return names the university’s foundation, not Mercatus). The two foundations were not partners in any of those grants on the pages read; the overlap is that the same research bench drew from both. See Global Disinformation Index.

Institutional Voice & Intent

The house style is the research-patron register: the Foundation is a funder of scholars and says so in the third person. Its mission line is a statement about opportunity, not about any technology: it “works to ensure all people have the opportunity to live a life of meaning and contribution” (Charles Koch Foundation, About us). On technology it speaks in the vocabulary of permission and protection. In 2017 it wrote that policymakers “must avoid undermining key protections for free speech that foster innovation, like CDA 230’s limited intermediary liability provisions”; in 2020 its executive director said “Innovation and technology have transformed the way humans live and have expanded opportunities for millions of people” and that the Foundation was excited to support the scholars and students as they explore “the intersection of law and technology” (Charles Koch Foundation, 2 Oct 2017; Charles Koch Foundation, 22 Sep 2020). In 2014 its incoming president said “The Koch family is among the most generous in the long tradition of American philanthropists” (Charles Koch Foundation, president announcement).

Stated alignment: Open exchange, civil liberties and permissionless innovation, delivered through academic independence: “Faculty call the shots.” Observed alignment: One endowment paying a university foundation, a humane-studies institute, a law-and-technology center, a social-media research center and a soft-law AI project, with the grants named in one place and the donors in none. Gap assessment: The Foundation publishes its returns and its major university agreements; what the public copy does not show is the donor list, the proposals declined, or how often a grantee’s findings ran against a position the Foundation has stated. The record cannot settle whether any grantee’s agenda bent toward the funder’s, and this file does not assert it. For a patron it never needs to: the position is the selection.

Stated intent: Support scholars and students whose work helps people “reach their full potential,” in the 2022 return’s own words, including “free expression” among its listed issues (Charles Koch Foundation, 2022 Form 990-PF). Observed intent: Build a research bench in the places where technology law is made: intermediary liability, soft-law governance of AI, digital markets, and the empirical study of platforms.

Interest. The documented position, in the Foundation’s words, is that intermediary-liability protection is a free-speech safeguard and that fast-changing technology is better governed by tested alternatives than by assumption in statute. What the position protects, on the face of the statute, is the provider: 47 U.S.C. 230(c)(1) reads “No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider,” and the Foundation’s own sentence names those provisions as the ones to preserve (Cornell LII, 47 U.S.C. 230; Charles Koch Foundation, 2 Oct 2017). What the Foundation pays for is on the record: two Arizona State projects on “soft law governance” of AI totalling $890,000, a standing request for proposals on “Technology & Innovation (including digital free speech),” and a Section 230 statement published beside a sponsorship of Techdirt. The best case, in the Foundation’s words and its grantees’, is that statute freezes what it regulates, that academic scholars should test the alternatives, and that the Foundation itself does not lobby or run advocacy: asked “Do you lobby, engage in advocacy, or support political candidates or causes?” its FAQ answers “No.” (Charles Koch Foundation, FAQ). The same research question has more than one funder on the record: the Knight Foundation put $150,000 into the Mercatus Center’s work on “content moderation policy and intermediary liability,” with “a focus on soft law,” so the foundations that paid for platform-governance research funded overlapping research benches. A provider the statute shields is a party the statute names; no source read here shows any provider funding or directing the Foundation. None of those ties requires any of the others to be improper.

• Social accounts and feeds. The Foundation’s home page links X (twitter.com/ckochfoundation), Facebook, LinkedIn and YouTube; it lists no RSS feed, and its newsroom is at charleskochfoundation.org/news. No separate Charles Koch Institute account or feed could be confirmed from a fetched page.

Position in the Apparatus

• The funder of the platform-governance scholar. The research that produced the field’s canonical account of Facebook’s Oversight Board was funded “entirely” by three grantors, and the Koch Foundation is one of them, with the Knight and MacArthur Foundations; the author’s note says no Facebook money reached it (Yale Law Journal). See Kate Klonick.
• A co-funder of the lab that studies platforms with the Newmark and Knight money. NYU’s center is credited to Knight, Koch and Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the last of which appears beside Hewlett as an “operational funder” of the Stanford Internet Observatory (Charles Koch Foundation, 10 Oct 2019; EIP, The Long Fuse). See Election Integrity Partnership.
• The soft-law bench. The Foundation’s Arizona State AI-governance grants and Knight’s Mercatus soft-law grant sit on the same research question; Hooks, the Foundation’s president, was Mercatus’s chief operating officer and executive director before 2014, and Charles Koch’s Mercatus profile lists him as Board Member Emeritus (Charles Koch Foundation, president announcement; Mercatus Center, Charles Koch).
• A neighbor of the Hewlett and MacArthur money. Hewlett paid the cyber-policy centers and the disinformation labs; MacArthur and Knight paid the Oversight Board scholarship; Koch paid the same scholar and a different set of university centers. See Hewlett Foundation and MacArthur Foundation.
• The Humane Studies pipeline. The Foundation’s second-largest line in 2024 is the Institute for Humane Studies ($6,090,000); the Foundation’s About page says Ryan Stowers “serves on the board of the Bill of Rights Institute and the Institute for Humane Studies,” and the same institute hosted Klonick’s June 2022 keynote and her 2022-2023 fellowship (Charles Koch Foundation, About us; Klonick CV).

Actions & Leadership Choices

Founding purpose. The Foundation exists to pay for scholarship the founder’s network values: its focus areas and its guiding values are its own list, and its choice since 2014 has been to give mostly through universities and to publish the agreements for its multi-year gifts. It did not announce an AI program; the AI line is a pair of university grants.

• It put Techdirt, the intermediary-liability defender, on its sponsor list (2017). The post is the Foundation’s, dated 2 October 2017, with the CDA 230 sentence quoted above and the Center for Democracy & Technology symposium the Institute supported (Charles Koch Foundation, 2 Oct 2017).
• It launched a social-media research center at NYU (2019). The center’s own research goals are “to understand how information spreads both within and across digital platforms,” and its funders are Knight, Koch and Newmark (Charles Koch Foundation, 10 Oct 2019).
• It funded the Oversight Board scholar for three years (2019 to 2022). Her CV dates the Institute grant 2019 to 2022 and the article’s author note credits the Foundation (Klonick CV).
• It paid $460,000 for soft-law governance of AI (2019 to 2022) and $430,000 more (2023 to 2024). Gary Marchant of Arizona State was principal investigator on both (ASU Research).
• It paid $1.3 million for a Nebraska law-and-technology center (2020) and described it as a study of “the changing relationship between law and technology” (Charles Koch Foundation, 22 Sep 2020).
• It moved $115,000,000 into a second vehicle (2020) and began spending it down. Charles Koch Foundation II disbursed $63,018,934 in 2024, up from $10,913,095 in 2023 (ProPublica).
• It changed executive directors in September 2024. The 2024 return marks Stowers “outgoing 9/8/24” and Derek Johnson as an incoming director on 9 October 2024 (ProPublica).

Leadership choices. The chair is Charles G. Koch and the vice chair Charles Chase Koch; the president of the Foundation, Brian Hooks, also chairs and runs Stand Together, and the executive director’s seat is the Foundation’s operating role. The directors listed on the filing include Elizabeth Koch, Dale Gibbens and David L. Robertson. The Foundation’s staff list reads as a program shop: a Vice President for Future Work (Laura Demarse), directors for partnership development and employee partnership strategy, and two senior program officers (ProPublica).

Convergent drives. Self-preservation: A perpetual endowment of $758.9 million, a family-chaired board, a second vehicle funded in 2020. Goal preservation: A university-based research bench in which “Faculty call the shots,” so that the funded field outlasts any grant. Resource acquisition: None needed beyond the endowment; the Foundation lists $44,958 in contributions for 2024. Self-improvement: From centers at Nebraska and NYU in 2019 and 2020 to soft-law AI governance and the general operating support of 2024.

Subject is not an AI system. The drives appear anyway.

CONDUCT: DISCLOSED PATRON — GRANTS AND FORMS PUBLISHED, DONORS AND DECLINED PROPOSALS NOT. The Foundation publishes its returns, its major university agreements and its focus areas, and says it does not lobby. The record does not show who endows it, what it declined, or how a funded finding that cut against its stated positions would have been handled. Disclosure names the funding; it does not remove the overlap.

Alliance Map

These run at the same time. The Foundation that paid for the scholar who documented the Oversight Board also paid for a social-media research center beside Knight and Newmark, a law-and-technology center in Nebraska, soft-law AI governance in Arizona and the humane-studies institute that hosted the scholar’s keynote, while its president also runs the network the Foundation is a member of. The overlap is the finding.

Reach Assessment

Institutional: Moderate. One endowment of about $759 million pays across the layers this archive profiles: a scholar of the Oversight Board, a social-media center at NYU, a law-and-technology center at Nebraska and soft-law AI projects at Arizona State, inside a $64 million year dominated by a $23.7 million gift to one university foundation. The reach is the introduction and the salary, not the order.

Memetic: Moderate. The Oversight Board account that the Yale Law Journal published, the NYU center’s research on how information spreads, and the soft-law frame for AI are cited in policy and press; the Foundation’s name is in the funding note. A patron that funds the vocabulary shapes the words without signing them.

Civilizational: Low. The Koch Foundation does not build models, write refusal policy or enforce rules, and says it does not lobby. Its civilizational weight is that a large share of the academic work on platform liability and AI governance has its name in the acknowledgments. The hazard is the position, not the people: an endowment of $759 million, family-chaired, undisclosed in its donors, that works through faculty who say they set their own questions. The score of 62 holds at the Knight Foundation (5/8/8, 62): the same reach through university centers, the same insulation from the graded, and the same entrenchment of a spend-down endowment, and below the Hewlett Foundation (6/9/9, 78) and the MacArthur Foundation (6/9/9, 78), which run technology programs as dated, staffed initiatives with announced budgets.

Sources: Charles Koch Foundation, home; Charles Koch Foundation, About us; Charles Koch Foundation, FAQ; Charles Koch Foundation, 990 Forms; Charles Koch Foundation, Major Grant Agreements; Charles Koch Foundation, Free Speech & Peace; Charles Koch Foundation, 2024 Form 990-PF; Charles Koch Foundation, 2022 Form 990-PF; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Charles Koch Foundation; ProPublica Nonprofit Explorer, Charles Koch Foundation II; Charles Koch Foundation, Techdirt and CDA 230 (2 Oct 2017); Charles Koch Foundation, NYU center (10 Oct 2019); Charles Koch Foundation, Nebraska center (22 Sep 2020); Charles Koch Foundation, president announcement; Yale Law Journal, The Facebook Oversight Board (30 Jun 2020); Klonick CV (19 Aug 2025); ASU Research, Advancing Soft Law Governance for AI; ASU Research, Soft Law Governance of AI Phase 2; Knight Foundation, new grants on internet governance (26 Jun 2020); Stand Together Trust, About; Mercatus Center, Charles Koch.

Further sources: Benton Institute, New Grants to Support Research on Internet Governance (14 Jul 2020); Law & Economics Center, Neil Chilson; EIP, The Long Fuse; Senate Lobbying Disclosure Act database.