Letterhead_organization
Letterhead organization
Public policy or other group lacking substantial active membership
In American politics, a letterhead organization (or letterhead group) is a public policy or other group lacking substantial active membership. In contrast to other civic organizations, letterhead organizations function through the issuance of public letters or other materials using names of notable persons (as on a "letterhead") to inherit their authority, rather than having authority based for example a large number of members.
The term has also been used in other countries, such as Canada,[1] and dates back to before 1921.[2] Before that, the term "paper organization", implying that an organization only existed on paper, was in common use. Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine in 1876 referred to a proposed Army Corps as a "paper organisation" as not actually composed of men and equipment.[3]
By 1972, the use of such organizations was becoming common. After Nixon was re-elected president in 1972, anti-McGovern Democrats founded the Coalition for a Democratic Majority (CDM), appointing as its director Penn Kemble. The CDM's letterhead listed "House Speaker-to-be Tom Foley, Ambassador-to-be Jeane Kirkpatrick, civil rights leaders Bayard Rustin, Velma and Norman Hill, the "boss"of Montgomery County Democratic politics Dick Schifter, Ambassador-to-be Peter Rosenblatt and Arms-Control Negotiator-to-be Max Kampelman"; the new organization placed full-page advertisements in The New York Times and The Washington Post. An initial contributor to the CDM was the Committee on Political Education of the AFL–CIO. "Letterhead organizations, I realized, could get ink for a point of view, and influence policy", wrote Ben Wattenberg in discussing Kemble and CDM. Later, Kemble used a similar strategy in founding the Institute for Religion and Democracy and other letterhead organizations.[4]