Police Foundations: Dark Money and the Refund the Police Movement

• In Event: Issues in Public Administration

Abstract

Public organizations consistently search for ways to enhance the amount and flexibility of their funding. Police organizations participate in this trend, as well, and recent research suggests growth in the prevalence of police foundations filling this role for police organizations (see Fernandez & Tremblay-Boire 2021; Lippert 2022). This paper examines whether growth in police foundation funds are responsive to incidents of officer use of force, which have been under greater scrutiny in recent years. In other words, does the public respond to such incidents and backlash against police officers by donating to police foundations? Do police organizations capitalize on public criticism of police by creating or growing police foundations? To address these questions, we rely on a unique dataset that combines data on incidents of police killings in communities (the Washington Post’s Fatal Force Database and the Mapping Police Violence database) with National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS) Core Files data on non-profit organizations, as well as contextual information about cities across the country from the American Community Survey. Using this unique data set, we turn to matching methods and a generalized difference-in-difference approach (Imai, Kim, and Wang 2021) to estimate the short- and long-term impact of police killings on foundation funding and fundraising. We discuss the implications of our findings for our understanding of growth and behavior of private support for public institutions. Additionally, we discuss how police organizations use these funds against a backdrop of salient incidents of officer misconduct and deteriorating perceptions of police legitimacy.

Authors

• Daniel Baker

• Cody Drolc, University of South Carolina

• Kelsey Shoub, University of Massachusetts Amherst