Thanks to the support of hundreds of liberty-minded individuals, 2019 was a banner year for the Pacific Research Institute. The generosity of our supporters is what allows us to champion freedom, opportunity, and personal responsibility by advancing free-market policy ideas. Over the past 12 months, PRI scholars have given dozens of speeches, written op-eds published in more than 800 online and print media outlets, and appeared on nearly 300 radio and television shows across the country.
PRI launched several new research and outreach initiatives over the past 12 months, including “Welcome to Change,” a film project under PRI’s Center for Education that debunks myths about charter schools and shows how charters are able to meet the diverse needs of students and parents; Legislating Energy Poverty, a study which found that New York and California’s approach to environmental and energy policies hurts working families and minority communities; and Breaking Down Barriers to Opportunity, a project to advance policies that would spur entrepreneurial growth and upward economic mobility. PRI also continued to promote Sally Pipes’ latest Encounter Books Broadside, The False Promise of Single-Payer Health Care, which exposes the many problems with single-payer systems in Canada and the United Kingdom and promotes market-driven reforms.
On this Giving Tuesday, we hope you will stand with PRI as we work to build a freer and more prosperous future for all Americans. As we prepare to meet the challenges of 2020, we hope you will consider making a contribution to support our mission. Your donation is fully tax-deductible and will directly impact our success in providing solutions to the pressing challenges facing our state and nation.
Entering 2020, PRI is uniquely positioned to anticipate, combat, and provide alternatives for many of the misguided policies that have taken root in our home state and threaten to win broader, national appeal. Our major goals, which your support will help us achieve, include:
- launching a major initiative to research the root causes of the homeless crisis crippling California’s cities and promote innovative solutions to improve individual well-being and housing stability;
- researching and educating Americans on the problems with proposals for “Medicare for All,” which is gaining mainstream support, while promoting market-based health care solutions;
- advancing policies that expand access to high-quality education such as school choice, charter schools, digital learning opportunities, and curriculum reform;
- releasing additional studies in PRI’s entrepreneurship series to promote upward economic mobility and relieve aspiring entrepreneurs of onerous regulations that muzzle their potential to succeed;
- examining the impact of big-government environmental regulations on low-income and minority communities and developing reforms that would yield better economic and environmental results;
- expanding PRI’s Center for Medical Economics and Innovation, which researches and advances policies to improve health care delivery through innovation; and
- releasing and promoting a book by PRI Fellow Damon Dunn on his journey from poverty to prosperity, which will show how education and entrepreneurship can enable families to pursue wealth creation.
These are just a few of the initiatives we will be undertaking in 2020. As should be clear, we’re not slowing down at PRI. The stakes have never been higher, and our work has never been more important. I hope that you will consider making a gift on this Giving Tuesday and partnering with us as we advance policies that promote innovation, marketplace competition, limited government, and individual choice.
Ben Smithwick is Vice President of Development at the Pacific Research Institute. Prior to joining PRI, he worked at Fox News Channel’s Los Angeles bureau and for the Santa Barbara News-Press.
