Attendees of the 2009 President's Council Retreat held June 14-16 in Chicago.

Thank you for considering making a donation to The Heartland Institute. I think you will find our perspectives on the major issues of the day -- budget and taxes, environmental protection, health care policy, information technology and telecom policy, legal reform, and school reform among others -- to be much closer to your own than the perspectives of most advocacy groups that influence public debate on these matters.

Heartland's mission is to discover and promote free-market solutions to social and economic problems. Such solutions include parental choice in education, market-based approaches to environmental protection, privatization of public services, and deregulation in areas where property rights and markets do a better job than government bureaucracies.

If our mission sounds a little unusual, it is because Heartland truly stands alone in the world of "think tanks":

• We are committed to effective marketing of research and commentary, not just kibitzing among academics or preaching to the choir.

• We find the best available research, regardless of who originally published it, and get permission to market it to audiences that it otherwise would not reach.

• We target state elected officials for special attention because no other think tank in the country designs its publications specifically to meet the information needs of this important and influential audience.

Heartland provides its financial supporters with a wide array of membership benefits, including your choice of any of our five public policy newspapers and access to cutting edge research and publications. For our most dedicated supporters, we host an exclusive monthly conference call series and the annual President’s Council Retreat,  a two-day summit featuring substantive discussions of free-market solutions to social and economic problems and a variety of networking and social activities.

Great publications that get read!

Our five monthly newspapers, Budget & Tax News, Environment & Climate News, Health Care News, Infotech & Telecom News, and School Reform News , grew out of discussions with legislators who said they are too busy for policy studies and even short essays. Legislators said they wanted publications they could scan and read quickly to stay on top of the news.

Heartland's newspapers are the outreach publications of the movements for lower taxes, free-market environmentalism, consumer-driven health care, innovation and consumer choice in information technology, and lower taxes. They all reach tens of thousands of readers, including every state and national elected official and thousands of journalists and radio talk show hosts. Many legislators tell us they read, quote, clip, and copy parts of every issue they receive.

Policy studies on serious issues, for serious people

In addition to our monthly newspapers, we release Heartland Policy Studies about every two months. These are peer-reviewed original research, often by leading experts in their fields. These studies generate extensive nationwide press attention. More importantly, they are used by elected officials to change public policies.

Heartland rules in cyberspace

Heartland's Web site on the Internet generated 15.6 million page views and attracted 5.5 million visitors in 2007. More than 23,000 documents from 350 organizations, stored onsite (no broken links!) in HTML or Adobe Acrobat's popular .PDF format, are available through PolicyBot.

The site also offers "issue suites" addressing smoking and common-sense environmentalism. We worked with allies to create and launch Global Warming Facts, a site devoted to the latest research and commentary on global climate change.

Have we earned your support?

Many groups and worthy causes ask for your support. I'm sure they do good and important work, too. But Heartland does things no other group does:

• Publishes five monthly public policy newspapers featuring the latest news and commentary on budget and tax issues, environmental regulation, heath care reform, telecommunications regulation, and school reform.

• Operates a customer-driven clearinghouse for free-market research and commentary.

• Communicates frequently with every state and national elected official, sending them a publication about every five days and fulfilling thousands of information requests.

• Works to defend and expand your civil and economic liberties, while working to rebuild and protect the institutions that made America a prosperous and free nation.

I hope this brief summary of our efforts persuades you to become a Heartland Member and, if possible, to become a Heartland donor as well. Contributions, including gifts of appreciated stock, are tax deductible under Section 501(c)3 of the Internal Revenue Code.

We genuinely need your financial support so that Heartland can continue to produce these publications and services. Can you help?