The Heritage Foundation on Wednesday announced the first recipients of its new Innovation Award, an award recognizing and supporting special projects from organizations focused on research, litigation, education and communication.

The Alliance Defending Freedom, Independent Women’s Forum and State Financial Officers Foundation will each receive $100,000 for their work in creating innovative solutions to key issues facing America, such as parental choice in parenting. Education, Border Security, Big Tech Accountability, Reducing Inflation, Ensuring Election Integrity, and Protecting Life and Family.

The winners were announced Wednesday at the annual Heritage Resource Bank meeting, held this year in Nashville, Tennessee.

The stated purpose of the Innovation Award is to “financially support innovative projects, bold strategies, and highly creative policy solutions that help build an America where freedom, opportunity, prosperity, and civil society flourish. “.

The Innovation Prize will award up to $1 million per year.

“The conservative movement must take on those who try to bring down the nation from within like never before,” said Heritage Foundation President Kevin Roberts.

The American people are looking for bold, innovative leaders who are willing to call out this radicalism for what it is, but also offer ideas and solutions to the problems facing millions of people today.

This is why Heritage has created the Innovation Award. It is about serving the movement and uniting conservatives, especially outside the ring road, to defeat the destructive ideology and designs of the radical left.

Alliance Defending Freedom, a nonprofit legal organization committed to protecting religious freedom and free speech, received an Innovation Award for its Viewpoint Diversity Score Business Index, which measures the level of “corporate respect for religious and ideological diversity in the marketplace, workplace and public square” of 50 influential Fortune 1000 companies, including Meta (the parent company of Facebook and Instagram), Twitter and Bank of America.

The Viewpoint Diversity Score provides resources, such as suggested policies, research, and opportunities for constructive dialogue, to companies ADF Scores that encourage improved freedom of expression and religious and ideological diversity.

The Independent Women’s Forum is a non-profit organization that educates women about political issues that affect them and fights for conservative ideals in politics, law, health care, economics and the workplace. The IWF received an innovation award for its work on the Declaration of the Rights of Women, a document defining basic terms such as “woman” and “mother” and affirming both equality and differences inherent between men and women.

“With the support of Heritage, we will have the ability to go on the offensive, forcing the left to publicly defend – or back off – its anti-women’s agenda,” said Independent Women’s Forum President Carrie Lucas. “Thank you to everyone at Heritage for supporting this essential weapon in the fight for equal opportunity, fairness and science.”

The State Financial Officers Foundation is a nonprofit, open-market organization dedicated to promoting fiscal responsibility at the state level. The foundation received an innovation award for its work in educating state policymakers and financial officials about the harmful effects of so-called environmental, social and governance standards, which can undermine the state economy. and concentrate investment power in a small group of government institutions and business leaders.

“[The State Financial Officers Foundation] state treasurers, auditors and other financial officers have worked tirelessly to educate the public and key stakeholders about the dangers of [environmental, social, and governance] invest, as corporations attempt to circumvent the democratic process and pursue their own political agenda,” said Derek Kreifels, CEO of the foundation. “It’s such an honor to be recognized with a Heritage Foundation Innovation Award as we work to educate the public with SFOF’s ‘Our Money, Our Values’ campaign.”

Do you have an opinion on this article ? To chime in, please email [email protected] and we’ll consider posting your edited remarks in our regular “We Hear You” column. Don’t forget to include the article’s URL or title as well as your name and city and/or state.