The Corporate Bill Mill: Who ALEC Is, Who Funds It, Who Benefits, and What You Can Do About It

Most Americans have never heard of the American Legislative Exchange Council. That is not an accident. It is a strategy.

ALEC is not a lobbying firm, though it functions like one. It is not a political party, though it operates like one. It is not a government agency, though it writes the laws that govern millions of people's lives. ALEC is a pay-to-play operation, a nonprofit organization founded in 1973 that brings state legislators and private corporations into the same room, behind closed doors with no press or public allowed, to write model legislation together. In ALEC's own words, corporations have "a voice and a vote" on specific changes to the law. Those ready-made bills are then handed to member legislators who take them home and introduce them in their own state legislatures, rarely if ever disclosing that a corporation wrote them. Approximately 200 ALEC model bills become law every single year across the United States.

What gets written in those rooms shapes criminal sentencing, immigration enforcement, voting access, environmental regulation, education policy, labor rights, and healthcare access for hundreds of millions of people. And the public has no seat at the table. The corporations do. The public does not.

This paper names the names. It identifies who is connected to ALEC right now, who funds it, which politicians have carried its water into government, and most importantly, what every person reading this can do about it.

What ALEC Does and How It Works

ALEC brings together three groups: state legislators, private corporations, and right-wing think tanks. Together, through a system of task forces, they draft model legislation. Each of ALEC's task forces includes both legislators and corporate representatives, who vote together on model policies. Once a model bill is approved, it becomes available to ALEC's legislative members across all 50 states, who introduce it as their own without disclosing its corporate origins.

ALEC claims to represent nearly one quarter of all state legislators in the country. Its membership is overwhelmingly Republican. Of the more than 100 legislators in ALEC leadership positions, only one is a Democrat. In Iowa and South Dakota, ALEC members have represented 100 percent of all legislative seats. This is not a bipartisan organization. It is a corporate apparatus operating inside the Republican Party.

The bills that come out of ALEC's task forces serve two masters: the corporations that fund ALEC and the ideological agenda those corporations share. They include mandatory minimum sentencing laws that fill private prisons, truth-in-sentencing legislation that keeps people incarcerated longer, Stand Your Ground gun laws, voter ID restrictions that disenfranchise Black and Brown voters, legislation attacking unions, bills blocking environmental regulation, and laws criminalizing immigration. Every one of these model bills has benefited a paying corporate member of ALEC while harming the communities that have the least political power to fight back.

ALEC also has a political action arm called ALEC Action, which operates separately from the nonprofit to directly influence elections and candidates. This is the full ecosystem: a think tank writes the policy, a nonprofit distributes it to legislators, and a PAC works to elect the legislators who will carry it.

Who Funds ALEC

ALEC describes itself as a membership organization for state legislators. The financial reality tells a very different story. More than 98 percent of ALEC's revenue comes from corporations, corporate trade groups, and corporate foundations, not from legislators. Legislative dues amount to less than 2 percent of its total revenue. ALEC is not funded by the people. It is funded by corporations purchasing access to lawmakers.

Here are the identified funders:

• The Bradley Foundation is ALEC's single largest identifiable funder. The Milwaukee-based foundation, with assets of nearly $1 billion, funneled $3.6 million into ALEC between 2019 and 2024. The Bradley Foundation is one of the largest funders of the American right, providing millions to groups working to suppress votes, bust unions, and spread climate misinformation.

  
  

• Charles Koch and the Koch Network represent the second largest identifiable source of ALEC funding. Koch gave $2.3 million to ALEC between 2019 and 2023 through his Stand Together Trust, Stand Together Fellowships, and Charles Koch Foundation. Koch Industries' lead lobbyist Michael Morgan has held a seat on ALEC's Private Enterprise Advisory Council for decades. In 2024, ALEC honored Koch's Stand Together organization with its Scalia Award. The relationship between Koch and ALEC is not a donation. It is a partnership.

  
  

• DonorsTrust and Donors Capital Fund are dark money conduits that have funneled millions to ALEC on behalf of donors who use them specifically to avoid disclosure. Between 2017 and 2021, DonorsTrust alone contributed $2.2 million to ALEC. DonorsTrust is the preferred vehicle of the Koch political network for anonymous giving. When a billionaire does not want their name attached to a grant, DonorsTrust is how they make it disappear from public view.

  
  

• The Searle Freedom Trust contributed $1.7 million to ALEC between 2017 and 2021. Its wealth comes from the pharmaceutical company G.D. Searle, and its president also chairs the board of DonorsTrust, cementing the overlap between these dark money networks.

  
  

• The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA), the drug industry's primary trade association, has contributed $504,000 to ALEC between 2017 and 2021 and has held a seat on ALEC's Private Enterprise Advisory Council for decades. While Americans pay the highest drug prices in the world, their industry's trade association is literally in the room writing state laws.

  
  

• ExxonMobil has contributed directly to ALEC for decades, including $1.4 million between 1998 and 2009 and an additional $45,000 in 2011 to sponsor a workshop on natural gas. ExxonMobil representatives sit on ALEC's Private Enterprise Advisory Council alongside Koch Industries, State Farm Insurance, AT&T, SAP, and Pfizer.

  
  

• Leonard Leo's dark money network has also directed funds to ALEC. Leo's 85 Fund gave more than $2.55 million collectively to seven Project 2025 advisory organizations including ALEC. Leo is the architect of the current conservative Supreme Court majority and one of the most powerful unelected figures in American politics. His funding of ALEC is part of a decades-long strategy to reshape American law from the courts to the statehouses.

Between 2019 and 2023, ALEC raised a total of $59.3 million. Only $19.1 million of that has been traced to identifiable sources. The remaining $40 million came from corporate and individual donors whose names ALEC is not required to disclose. That is the point. The system is designed to keep the public from knowing who is buying their laws.

Who in Government Is Connected to ALEC

ALEC does not just influence government from the outside. Its alumni are inside government right now, at every level, shaping policy in ways that serve the corporate network that trained them.

In Congress: ALEC itself boasted in July 2025 that more than 114 members of Congress are ALEC alumni, as are five current cabinet secretaries. That is more than one in five members of the entire United States Congress carrying the ALEC brand into the federal government. ALEC's own alumni page names those five cabinet secretaries as Secretary of Veterans Affairs Doug Collins, Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, and Secretary of Housing and Urban Development Scott Turner. ALEC's alumni page also lists sitting Congress members including Congressman James Comer of Kentucky, Congressman H. Morgan Griffith of Virginia, and Congressman Timothy K. Moore of North Carolina, among dozens of others in the House alone. Congressman Ron Estes of Kansas, a current sitting member of the House, appeared as a speaker at ALEC's December 2024 States and Nation Policy Summit in Washington D.C., demonstrating that the relationship between ALEC and its Congressional members is not historical. It is active and ongoing.

At ALEC's 2025 Annual Meeting in Indianapolis, U.S. Representative Victoria Spartz addressed the gathering, Senator Jim Banks sent a video message, and Heritage Foundation President Dr. Kevin Roberts appeared as a featured speaker. Roberts has described Heritage's role as "institutionalizing Trumpism." The presence of sitting legislators and cabinet-connected figures at a private corporate-legislative gathering is not networking. It is coordination.

At ALEC's December 2025 States and Nation Policy Summit in Fort Worth, Texas, ALEC task force members considered a docket of over 80 draft model policies. Speakers included U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins, Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services Alex J. Adams, Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, former Texas Governor Rick Perry, and school privatization activist Erika Donalds. Attendees debated model policies that would suppress the vote, advance MAGA priorities, and further endanger the climate. Two sitting †rump regime officials addressing a private corporate-legislative summit is not a coincidence. It is a demonstration of how completely ALEC's agenda has merged with the federal government.

The Heritage Foundation Connection: ALEC is a member of the advisory board of Project 2025, the Heritage Foundation's blueprint to reshape the entire federal government. The Heritage Foundation and ALEC share not just funders but founders. Both were co-founded by Paul Weyrich, a conservative strategist who stated explicitly that his goal was not to preserve the status quo but to "overturn the present power structure of this country." The organizations he built have been working toward that goal for fifty years. Project 2025, which has guided significant portions of the †rump regime's policy agenda, is the most visible expression of that effort.

The Koch-ALEC-Government Pipeline: Charles Koch's network has not just funded ALEC. It has placed its people throughout the organization. Some Koch Fellows, alumni of the Charles Koch Foundation's training program, have gone on to become ALEC staffers, including Jonathan Williams, now ALEC's president. The pipeline runs from Koch's funding network, through ALEC's training and legislative infrastructure, and directly into state and federal government. It is a complete circuit.

State Legislators: ALEC's current board of directors includes state legislators from Florida, West Virginia, Kansas, Oklahoma, Michigan, Georgia, Mississippi, Texas, Wyoming, Tennessee, Ohio, Kentucky, Arizona, New York, and Iowa, among others. The 2026 ALEC National Chair comes from the Florida House of Representatives. The 2025 National Chair was West Virginia Senator Patricia Rucker. The 2024 National Chair was Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who used his ALEC profile to launch a campaign for governor. ALEC is not just influencing politicians. It is building them.

But the most alarming measure of ALEC's grip on state government is this: more than 70 legislators affiliated with ALEC now hold leadership positions in 35 states. In 24 of the 28 state legislatures where Republicans hold the majority, 40 ALEC members hold at least one of the party's top leadership positions: speaker, president, majority leader, minority leader, president pro tem, or speaker pro tem. These are not backbenchers carrying ALEC's water. These are the people controlling which bills come to a vote, who sits on which committees, and what the entire chamber's agenda looks like for a given session. When ALEC writes a model bill and hands it to a legislator who is also the speaker of the house, it does not need to lobby. It already controls the room.

ALEC's CEO Lisa Nelson made the organization's relationship to power explicit after the 2024 election, declaring to donors: "America chose the path championed by ALEC." That is not a boast. It is a confession. ALEC did not just predict the political moment. It helped engineer it, decade by decade, model bill by model bill, legislator by legislator.

The Racial Justice Dimension

None of this is racially neutral. The legislation ALEC has written and distributed across the country has disproportionately targeted Black, Brown, and poor communities with devastating precision.

The mandatory minimum sentencing laws ALEC pioneered in the 1990s drove the explosion of mass incarceration that filled private prisons with Black and Brown bodies. In 1995 alone, ALEC's Truth in Sentencing Act was signed into law in 25 states, each one ratcheting up sentences for nonviolent offenses while GEO Group and Corrections Corporation of America, both ALEC corporate sponsors, collected the profit. ALEC arranged secret meetings between Arizona legislators and CCA to draft SB 1070, the notorious immigration law designed specifically to keep CCA detention facilities full of immigrant bodies.

As ALEC Attacks documents, ALEC is specifically devoted to spreading corporate agendas that target the rights and lives of communities of color. The voter ID bills, the Stand Your Ground laws, the anti-union legislation, the bills criminalizing protest, the policies attacking public education in communities of color: these are not coincidental policy positions. They are the coordinated output of a system designed to keep political and economic power concentrated in the hands of corporations and the wealthy, at the direct expense of Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor communities.

ALEC's voter suppression agenda is particularly pointed. At its December 2025 summit, ALEC politicians debated model bills including the List Maintenance Act, which would require states to share voter registration data across state lines, and other measures designed to strain election systems and suppress turnout in communities of color. These bills are not about election integrity. They are about making it harder for Black, Brown, and poor communities to vote, the same communities ALEC's criminal justice legislation has worked to disenfranchise through mass incarceration for decades.

The through-line is deliberate. Strip voting rights through incarceration. Then suppress the votes of those who are free. Then write laws that ensure more of them end up incarcerated. The loop closes on itself. ALEC did not invent this cycle. But it industrialized it.

For a detailed look at how ALEC's legislative pipeline connects directly to the explosion of for-profit immigration detention, the criminalization of poverty, and the long history of anti-Black racism in the American carceral system, read the companion piece The Architecture of Oppression: How Systemic Racism Built America's Prison Industrial Complex and Why History Keeps Repeating.

It Worked Before: How Corporate Pressure Broke ALEC

This is not the first time ALEC has faced public accountability. In 2012, the killing of Trayvon Martin drew national attention to ALEC's Stand Your Ground model legislation, which had been drafted in coordination with the NRA and spread to states across the country. Color of Change launched a campaign to pressure ALEC's corporate funders to withdraw, and more than sixty corporations responded, including Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Walmart, Amazon, Apple, General Electric, Procter and Gamble, and the Gates Foundation, all of which dropped ALEC or let their memberships lapse. Thirty-four legislative members also left. ALEC suffered a significant funding shortfall and was forced to reorganize.

That campaign worked because it targeted the right pressure point: the corporations. ALEC's legislators need their corporate funders. The corporations need their public reputations. When the public makes the cost of association with ALEC higher than the benefit, corporations leave. When corporations leave, ALEC loses both funding and political cover.

The lesson is clear. ALEC is not invincible. It is accountable to the same market forces it claims to champion. And that is exactly where the fight needs to go.

How to Find Out If Your Legislator Is an ALEC Member

ALEC does not publicly release the full list of its legislative members. That opacity is deliberate. But there are ways to find out.

• Use ALEC Exposed's resources at ALECexposed.org to research legislators in your state. The Center for Media and Democracy has compiled extensive documentation of known ALEC members, task force participants, and bill sponsors.

  
  

• Search your state legislator's name at SourceWatch.org, which maintains a running database of known ALEC politicians past and present.

  
  

• Use the ALEC alumni page at alec.org/about/alumni to see which current members of Congress ALEC itself claims as its own.

  
  

• Contact your state legislator directly and ask them in writing: Are you a current member of ALEC? Have you introduced any model legislation drafted by or distributed through ALEC? Have you attended any ALEC conferences or meetings? A legislator who represents you owes you an answer. If they refuse to give one, that refusal is itself an answer.

  
  

• Use Ballotpedia's state legislature pages to find your state representatives and their contact information, then ask directly.

Filing a public records request in your state can also reveal whether your legislator has used taxpayer funds to pay ALEC membership dues. In Wisconsin, open records requests revealed that 12 Republican state senators had their ALEC dues paid with public money. Your state may reveal the same.

Who to Call, Where to Protest, and How to Fight Back

• ALEC Headquarters Address: 2733 Crystal Drive, Suite 1000, Arlington, VA 22202 Phone: 703-373-0933 Email: meetings@alec.org

  ALEC holds an annual summer meeting and a December States and Nation Policy Summit every year. These meetings rotate locations but are always announced on alec.org/meetings. Protests at ALEC annual meetings have a documented history of impact. Show up. Make noise. Bring cameras.

  
  

• The Heritage Foundation Address: 214 Massachusetts Avenue NE, Washington, D.C. 20002 Phone: 202-546-4400 Website: heritage.org

  The Heritage Foundation is the intellectual and organizational backbone of Project 2025 and a co-architect of the ALEC network. Protesters have gathered outside Heritage's Washington headquarters to protest Project 2025, with organizers planning larger actions. Heritage is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit that claims public benefit status while actively working to dismantle civil rights protections and concentrate federal power. Its nonprofit status is a pressure point: demand that the IRS investigate whether Heritage's political activities disqualify it from tax-exempt status.

  
  

• Koch Industries Address: 4111 E. 37th Street North, Wichita, KS 67220 Phone: 316-828-5500 Website: kochinc.com

  Charles Koch is the single most influential private funder in the ALEC network and a key bankroller of Project 2025 advisory groups. Koch Industries produces products under dozens of consumer brands. Research which Koch-owned brands you purchase and consider redirecting your spending. Consumer pressure on Koch-affiliated brands has moved the needle before.

  
  

• GEO Group Address: 4955 Technology Way, Boca Raton, FL 33431 Phone: 561-893-0101 Website: geogroup.com

  GEO Group is the largest private prison and IÇE detention contractor in the country, one of ALEC's historic corporate sponsors, and a major donor to †rump-affiliated political committees. It reported a company record $254 million in profit in 2025 driven entirely by IÇE detention contracts. Call them. Write them. Show up at their shareholder meetings.

  
  

• CoreCivic Address: 5501 Virginia Way, Brentwood, TN 37027 Phone: 615-263-3000 Website: corecivic.com

  CoreCivic, formerly Corrections Corporation of America, is GEO Group's primary competitor and fellow ALEC corporate alumni. It operates IÇE detention facilities where children have been denied medical care, drinkable water, and adequate food. It reported $2.2 billion in revenue in 2025.

Your Members of Congress Find your senators and representatives at congress.gov/members/find-your-member. Call their offices. Ask them directly whether they are ALEC members or alumni. Ask them whether they support ending for-profit immigration detention. Ask them whether they will commit to refusing campaign contributions from GEO Group and CoreCivic. Record the answers. Share them publicly.

The Capitol switchboard connects to any member of Congress: 202-224-3121.

Organizations Fighting ALEC Right Now

These organizations are on the front lines of exposing and countering the ALEC network. Support them financially, amplify their work, and get involved.

• ALEC Exposed / Center for Media and Democracy is the most comprehensive resource for tracking ALEC's model legislation, its funders, and its legislative members. CMD has been doing this investigative work since 2011 and maintains databases that give citizens the tools to identify ALEC's fingerprints on laws in their own states.

• EXPOSEDbyCMD publishes investigative reporting specifically on ALEC funding, corporate connections, and the dark money networks that sustain it. Their financial investigations are the most thorough available and are essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the full scope of who is paying for American legislation.

• Color of Change ran the 2012 corporate accountability campaign that forced more than sixty companies to leave ALEC. They are the most proven force for making corporations pay a reputational cost for their political entanglements. Sign up, donate, and join their campaigns.

• Common Cause has filed complaints with the IRS challenging ALEC's nonprofit status and has been a consistent watchdog on ALEC's political activities. They provide toolkits for citizens to engage with state and local government on ALEC-related legislation.

• The Brennan Center for Justice tracks the impact of ALEC model legislation on voting rights, criminal justice, and democracy. Their research provides the evidentiary foundation for legal challenges to ALEC-drafted laws.

• Indivisible organizes grassroots political action at the local and state level, including direct pressure on legislators who carry ALEC legislation. Their chapter finder helps connect people with local groups already doing this work.

• People's Action is a national network of grassroots organizations fighting corporate power in state legislatures, including direct challenges to ALEC-affiliated legislators.

What Every Person Can Do Starting Today

Knowing about ALEC is the beginning. Ending its grip on American democracy requires sustained, organized, collective action. Here is where to start:

• Find out if your state legislator is an ALEC member using the tools above. If they are, show up at their next town hall or constituent meeting and ask them publicly about their ALEC membership and which model bills they have introduced. Bring others.

  
  

• Contact corporations that currently fund ALEC. The list of past and present corporate members includes household names. Let them know that their funding of a pay-to-play legislative operation that has produced racially discriminatory laws, voter suppression bills, and private prison profit mechanisms is something you know about, something you object to, and something that will affect where you spend your money.

  
  

• Demand disclosure. Contact your state ethics commission and ask whether your legislature has rules requiring disclosure when model legislation originates from an outside organization. If it does not, demand one. ALEC's power depends on secrecy. Sunlight is the most effective disinfectant.

  
  

• Support investigative journalism. The organizations documenting ALEC's activities, including the Center for Media and Democracy, EXPOSEDbyCMD, The Nation, and The Intercept, operate on limited budgets against a network with tens of millions of dollars in annual funding. Sustaining investigative journalism is not optional. It is a form of resistance.

  
  

• Show up at protests. ALEC's annual meetings bring together the legislators, lobbyists, and corporate executives who run this system in one place at a scheduled time. That is an opportunity. Monitor ALEC's meeting schedule at alec.org/meetings, and connect with Color of Change, Common Cause, and People's Action to coordinate visible, public accountability actions.

  
  

• Vote in every election at every level. ALEC operates primarily at the state level because state legislatures are where its model bills become law. Governors, state senators, state representatives, and state attorneys general have enormous power over whether ALEC legislation passes and whether it gets challenged. Local elections matter. Show up for them.

The machinery that ALEC built over fifty years did not construct itself. It was built decision by decision, donation by donation, bill by bill, by people who understood that power belongs to whoever is willing to organize and fight for it over the long term. The answer to that machinery is the same. Organize. Fight. Stay. Do not let the news cycle move on and take your attention with it.

ALEC is counting on the public's forgetfulness. The public's job is to disappoint them.