Throughout American history, there have been groups aiming to advocate for one policy or another. Many of these have been liberal, whilst there have only been a few conservative organizations.
Many of these organizations are only slightly right-leaning. However, many are much more right wing and have often caused a lot of controversy through supporting or advocating for certain controversial policies.
15. Federalist Society
Chances are that you’ve never heard of the Federalist Society, even if you are a hard-core conservative. However, the Federalist Society serves as the most important group in conservative lawmaking.
The Federalist Society was founded by a group of judges in 1982. Originally, their purpose was to influence law schools into being more political neutral, however, eventually, the society took on a new purpose.
This was to serve as conservative jurists’ safe haven. Since then, all conservative presidents have elected new judges from this group, acting almost like a ready-made roster for future judges.
Although both parties are unrelated, the Federalist Society has served as the namesake of The Federalist, one of the best conservative blogs currently online.
14. American Family Association
Over the course of the 1970’s, 1980’s and 1990’s, traditional American family values have decreased, even in conservative states, at least according to the AFA. In order to stop this, the AFA was founded in the 1977 to prevent this.
As if this wasn’t bad enough (for them at least), Americans had also become less religious, and has thus brought many “sinful” laws into law. The AFA was established in hopes of repealing these laws and increasing religion in the US once again.
Unlike many other organizations, the AFA hasn’t (really) done this through marches or generally causing controversy. Instead, they have done it through trying to influence conservative media and TV.
Despite this approach, the AFA’s stance on things like LGBT rights, abortion and even pornography have caused significant controversy. It has often been branded as anti-American by liberal outlets as well.
13. The Conservative Caucus
For the vast majority of these conservative organizations, they advocate purely for reforms by navigating the complex world of politics. However, The Conservative Caucus has taken a page out of the left’s book.
Instead of skillfully influencing policy, The Conservative Caucus performs what it calls citizen activism. Citizen activism is exactly what it sounds like- citizens with conservative views on policies holding marches and rallies to influence policies.
On top of this, The Conservative Caucus is also a lobbying group. If a policy comes up that threatens the conservative way of life, TCC has been known to pour massive amounts of money into stopping it.
Through its activism, TCC has actually popularized many policies within American conservative circles. Chief among them is abolishing income tax in favor of a low revenue tariff.
12. Eagle Forum
The Eagle Forum is by far one of the oldest and most notorious conservative organizations in the world. Originally founded by Phyliss Schlafly, the forum holds many of her traditional conservative views, often making headlines because of it.
In 1967, conservative activist Phyliss Schlafly (mother of Andrew Schlafly) launched what is now known as a conservative interest group. The Eagle Trist Fund would serve as an organization who’d accept and give donations to Republican candidates.
Over the years, the Eagle Forum has expanded into a PAC, education and legal defense fund among other things. Almost all of this money goes solely towards conservative causes.
Many of its members and staunchest supporters have come from within the Republican Party itself. For the most part, these have been the individual state parties, however, have occasionally been from the main party too.
11. Conservative Group for Europe
Anyone familiar with the EU, especially the history of the EU, will know that Britain, even before Brexit has always been the odd one out. Even before the EU was the EU, the British Conservative Party were staunchly against the UK joining.
Among these people was Margaret Thatcher, arguably the greatest British Prime Minister in history. However, there were several members within the Conservative Party who saw the economic and business potential in the deal.
However, these members were too disorganized to do anything. As such, in 1969, the Conservative Group for Europe was founded, aiming to bring closer ties between the UK and European Union.
Despite the UK having recently left the EU, having voted to leave in 2016, the organization still exists. It is one of only a handful of EU-related conservative organizations still actively trying to get the UK to rejoin the EU.
10. The Heritage Foundation
Think tanks are often criticized by conservative media for the vast majority of them being liberal. For the most part, these think tanks predict a Democrat victory or that liberal policies will be passed, even if they won’t.
However, during the Nixon Administration, many business activists got fed up of Nixon’s “Liberal consensus”. These activists struggled to gain admission to the conservative American Enterprise Institute, so did the next best thing.
They set up their own version. This was called The Heritage Foundation, and advocated for much of the same things the AEI did. However, to distinguish themselves, they also advocated for religious conservatism too.
During the Reagan Administration, Heritage informed not only Reagan, but also the UK’s Margaret Thatcher. Here, they influenced thousands of economic and social policies that are still around today!
9. Conservative Friends of Israel
For the most part, conservatives tend to support Israel more than liberals do. Generally, these conservatives tend to vote for international legislation that helps Israel, rather than those that hurt it.
A large group of British Conservative MPs realized that they all shared pro-Israel ideologies, however, were too disorganized to properly put their ideologies into law.
The result was that, in 2005, the Conservative Friends of Israel was formed. The organization’s intentions were to increase business, cultural and political ties to Israel through implementing new laws.
Due to this, the organization is comprised of almost 2/3 of the Conservative MPs in Parliament. This number includes high profile Conservative Party MPs like Theresa May, David Cameron and Iain Duncan-Smith.
8. Traditional Values Coalition
According to the Traditional Values Coalition, during the 1980’s, Americans became less religious. As such, a Californian revered established the Traditional Values Coalition to make American religious again.
Originally, TVC lobbied for increased religion in schools, mostly religious education from local vicars and/or ministers. However, soon expanded its reach across the country.
With this, so did the organization’s message. On top of its original goals, TVC also lobbied against LGBT rights, being at the forefront of that for much of the 1980’s and 1990’s, influencing quite a bit of policy.
As you can probably imagine, TVC has gathered a lot of media attention for its more extreme remarks, usually about LGBT people. Due to this, TVC has been labelled as a hate group, although it insists it is just following its religious beliefs.
7. LGBT+ Conservatives
Many conservative organizations have been criticized for being homophobic, whether intentionally or not. However, there are some gay people who hold conservative views regardless.
These people are known as gay conservatives, and have been growing in size since the beginning of the century. Britain is the country with the most gay conservatives per capita, and the Tories have welcomed them with open arms.
With this, many gay Tories have become advocates for gay rights, but in a way that appeals to conservative ideals. To do this, the Tories established the LGBT+ Conservatives to centralize these voices.
LGBT+ Tories are often at the forefront of LGBT marches, which has gathered them a lot of media attention. Thanks to this media attention, several other countries have taken note and instituted their own LGBT conservative organizations.
6. Christian Voice
Christian Voice is actually two organizations, both completely independent from one another, yet extremely similar. One was established in the US, but folded in 2012, where the other one was established in the UK and is still active.
Officially speaking, the organization is independent of any political party or religious denomination. However, for almost its entire history, the organization has supported the Conservative Party, whilst mocking the Labour Party.
According to the organization, their sole purpose is to “promote Christian values as they are laid out in the Bible”. Mostly, this is to do with supporting and upholding traditional family values and gender roles.
The organization follows the Bible to the letter, often gathering controversy because of it. Famously, the organization is anti-LGBT+ rights, abortion and, horrifyingly, martial rape, all gathering its own controversy.
5. European Young Conservatives
The European Young Conservatives are a rather odd bunch. For starters, they are the only major pan-European conservative organization, with members in almost all European countries.
Secondly, the organization isn’t really one organization, rather, being a collection of conservative youth groups from all over Europe, who bond over their conservative ideologies.
For the most part, the EYC is dedicated to forming the backbone of Europe’s future conservative leaders. This has been shown through their annual meetups which consist of several panels discussing the future of conservatism.
Many of the organization’s “members” are members of their own country’s conservative party’s youth group. This membership allows them to be a member of EYC, and intermingle with their counterparts form other countries.
4. Business Roundtable
For most of these conservative organizations, they promote religion, family and other key conservative principles. However, for the most part, they forget one other major aspect of conservatism: business.
In light of this, the Business Roundtable was established to be the US Chamber of Commerce for conservative CEOs.
The organization was founded in 1972, by a group of CEOs in Washington, DC. For the most part, these CEOs were from conservative companies such as Exxon and DuPont.
Over the course of the organization’s history, they have been responsible for lobbying for pro-business policies. This has seen things like tax cuts in the 1980’s and the institution of NAFTA in the 1990’s, among others.
As with other conservative organizations, the BRT has gathered substantial criticism from the left, mostly for its pro-business lobbying. The BRT has also criticized President Trump for various things during his presidency.
3. American Legislative Exchange Council
Chances are that you haven’t hear of the American Legislative Exchange Council. However, you have probably heard of it by its more common name: ALEC.
Since its inception, ALEC has influenced, and sometimes even wrote entire pieces of legislation! In recent years, ALEC has seen many of its bills passed in state houses as well as Congress!
For almost its entire history, ALEC has supported conservative ideals. Most of the time, these have been economics-related, rather than social related, which has saved it somewhat from the ire of the left.
Generally speaking, ALEC influences areas such as trade, free markets, limited governments, weakened labor unions and other such ideals. Naturally, ALEC has been criticized a fair amount for this.
2. Margaret Thatcher Foundation
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation is rather unique. Not just in the sense that it was established by a sitting Prime Minister to preserve their tenure over the country, but also for one other reason…
It isn’t actually political. Where almost all other conservative organizations hold rallies and try to influence legislation, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation doesn’t really do that.
Instead, it is meant to document the highs and the lows of Margaret Thatcher’s tenure as Prime Minister. As it was founded by Thatcher herself, the organization naturally portrays her in a good light.
With that, the Margaret Thatcher Foundation is on the whole very conservative, going as far to publish a lot of the material available on her leadership, much of which gets taught in British schools.
1. Turning Point USA
When it comes to conservative organizations, Turning Point USA is the most famous. This is perhaps thanks to the 2016 Presidential Election, where they significantly influenced the outcome of the Republican Nominations and Presidential Elections.
Turning Point USA has its origins with campus conservative Charlie Kirk and famed conservative Bill Montgomery. Allegedly, Montgomery heard a then-18 year old Kirk give an impassioned speech at Benedictine University’s “Youth Empowerment Day”.
Montgomery allegedly approached Kirk about founding a conservative advocacy group, which Kirk agreed to. This organization would become well known as Turning Point USA.
Initially, TPUSA was envisioned as a campus movement, however, eventually grew far beyond that. Today, the organization promotes free markets, limited government and a balanced budget.
On top of this, TPUSA has made headlines for having several high-profile black conservatives. In turn, these black conservatives have made headlines, both for good and bad reasons.
Which are your favorite conservative organizations? Tell me in the comments!