The History of The Future of Freedom of Freedom Foundation

The Future of Freedom Foundation was founded in 1989 in Denver, Colorado, by Richard M. Ebeling and me. Richard and I met in Dallas in the mid-1980s. At that time I was a trial attorney, but spent most of my free time studying libertarianism and Austrian economics. I had been an economics major but the course work had been mostly based on Keynesian economics. Thus, I hired the chairman of the economics department at the University of Dallas, Sam Bostaph, to tutor me in classical economics. The tutorial covered Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations, David Ricardo’s Principles, and Carl Menger’s Principles of Economics.

At that point, Richard was hired to teach economics at UD, and Sam said to me, "I hate to give up the money you’re paying me, but for Austrian economics, you should be tutored by the person who knows more about this area than anyone else in your age group."

Thus, every week Richard gave me a chapter-by-chapter tutorial of Ludwig von Mises’s magnum opus, Human Action. After the tutorial, I would treat Richard to lunch at a great Mexican restaurant in Irving. Today, Richard likes to say that it was one of his biggest bonanzas–his getting paid to do no real work and getting a free lunch to boot.

In 1987, I left the practice of law to accept a position as program director at The Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) in Irvington-on-Hudson, New York. My first exposure to libertarianism had been the movie "The Fountainhead" on afternoon television while I was in law school. But my discovery of the first four volumes of Essays on Liberty in the late 1970s, which had been published by FEE, is what provided my "breakthrough" to libertarianism. Thus, it was a tremendous experience to go to work for the organization that actually changed the course of my life.

In the meantime, Richard left the University of Dallas to assume a position as Ludwig von Mises Professor of Economics at Hillsdale College in Michigan. That college takes the principled position of refusing all government funding and not permitting its students to take government grants. It is entirely privately funded. Hillsdale has had a long tradition of emphasizing religious values, free-market principles, and Austrian economics. In fact, Mises’s private library is located at Hillsdale. In a fascinating story that was reported in the national press, including the Wall Street Journal, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Richard located Mises’s long-lost private papers in Russian archives in Moscow, and in conjunction with Liberty Fund, the college is now publishing them.

In 1989, I decided to leave FEE to establish FFF in Denver. Richard stayed at Hillsdale, but we worked closely together to put the foundation into operation. Our principal activity was the publication of our journal Freedom Daily, which began as a small calendar book that included essays by Richard and me. We began with just a few subscribers but our subscription base gradually began growing. Our inaugural supper in Denver featured Walter Williams and Richard Ebeling as our speakers.

Since we had begun FFF with no commitments of financial support, things were precarious from the start. One donor, who is still one of our most generous financial supporters, was our first supporter, with donations totaling $20,000. But at the end of our first year, the Foundation still owed the bank some $40,000, the note was about to come due, and the situation looked very bleak. Out of the clear blue, a donor called, inquired about our situation, and sent us a check for $50,000. We paid off the bank note and things gradually stabilized.

Our fundraising approach has always been a subtle one: If people like our work, they will support us; if they don’t, they won’t. We provide our subscribers with Freedom Daily and reports of our efforts to advance liberty in the hopes that they find our work worthy of their support.

After a couple of years, we abandoned the calendar format for Freedom Daily and went to an all-essays format along with quotations on liberty. Sheldon Richman, who as senior editor at the Cato Institute, began writing for us on a regular basis. He was then joined by James Bovard, who had become a nationally known libertarian author and journalist. Thus, Richard, Sheldon, Jim, and I became the four regular authors for Freedom Daily. Periodic authors have included Doug Bandow, Ralph Raico, Robert Higgs, Wendy McElroy, and others.

In 1993, FFF moved its operations to Fairfax, Virginia. Our primary focus had always been on domestic and international policies, and so it made sense for us to move closer to the center of the federal government. However, our methodology remained the same–rather than trying to influence government officials to adopt libertarianism, we continued our focus on providing a means by which ordinary people could improve their understanding of libertarian principles.

In the mid-1990s, we began a very active seminar program, both on-the-road and through our supper club here in the Washington area–the Vienna Coffee Club. We also helped co-sponsor academic conferences in conjunction with the economics department at George Mason University. Most of the speeches and lectures have been taped and are sold on our website–both video and audio.

A few years ago, we embarked on our most successful outreach program in our history–our op-ed program. It began with op-eds by Sheldon and then expanded with ones by me and some by Richard and Jim. This program has enabled us to share libertarian perspectives with ordinary people all over the United States as well as in Latin America. Our op-eds have now been published in more than 800 newspapers nationwide, including the Washington Post, Philadelphia Inquirer, Christian Science Monitor, Washington Times, and many, many small- and medium-sized newspapers. The complete list of newspapers is posted on our website.

We also decided to target Hispanic newspapers and African-American newspapers, and we have met with tremendous success in these markets as well. The complete list of Hispanic papers is posted in the Spanish section of our website.

Most recently, our op-eds have been picked up by two national wire services — Knight Ridder and Scripps-Howard, which has increased the distribution of our op-eds even more.

All of our op-eds and the list of newspapers that are publishing them are posted on our website.

In 1999, we decided to take the biggest risk since our inception in 1989. We decided to post all of our articles, including Freedom Daily and our op-eds, on line on a new website. We understood that this would result in a diminution in our subscriber base, which is why it was such a risk. But we hoped that our donors would understand that by posting everything online, we would be more effectively fulfilling our mission by sharing our work with people all over the world.

So far, the risk has paid off. With an estimated 2,000 articles, our website is one of the most extensive libertarian resource banks for people all over the world. And while our subscription revenue dropped as we expected, our supporters made up the shortfall with donations.

Most recently, we converted our FFF Email Update format to an on-line and email publication that is posted and sent out six times a week. It's popularity has propelled FFF's Alexa.com ranking from 180,000 last summer to among the top 15,000 websites on the Internet in terms of traffic.

Over the years, we have also had an active book-publishing program, in which we have published 8 books. Five of the books have been edited by Richard and me and consist of essays from Freedom Daily: The Dangers of Socialized Medicine; The Case for Free Trade and Open Immigration; The Failure of America’s Foreign Wars; The Tyranny of Gun Control; and our newest book, Liberty, Security, and the War on Terrorism. The other three books have been authored by Sheldon Richman: Separating School & State: How to Liberate America’s Families; Your Money or Your Life: Why We Must Abolish the Income Tax; Sheldon’s newest book, Tethered Citizens: Time to Repeal the Welfare State.

Our mission remains the same as it has been since our inception in 1989: to advance liberty by providing an uncompromising moral, philosophical, and economic case for the libertarian philosophy – individual freedom, free markets, private property, and limited government.

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