GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (Feb. 1, 2011) — A new survey of 5,500 organizations by the Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program at the University of Pennsylvania ranked the Acton Institute among the best global social policy organizations and in the top 50 think tanks overall in the United States.

The 2010 Global Go-To Think Tank Rankings, directed by James G. McGann of the International Relations department at Penn, put Acton at No. 12 on the Top 25 Social Policy Think Tank list. Acton was ranked No. 47 among the top think tanks in the United States. Overall, there are more than 1,800 think tanks in the United States, according to the survey.

McGann noted in his report that think tanks are indispensable to the creation of a “robust” civil society which, in turn, creates a “virtuous cycle” of consolidation for the public good. The potential for think tanks to build a healthier, more closely knit society, he said, was “far from exhausted.”

The rankings show that the two decades of work by the Acton Institute and its supporters aimed at the creation of a “free and virtuous” society are widely recognized by journalists, scholars and public policy experts, Executive Director Kris Mauren said. “Increasingly, Acton’s research is being used where policy issues engage the munity,” he said. “There’s a growing realization that good intentions must be connected to sound economics.”

Mauren said he was particularly heartened by the growth of global networks and the partnerships between think tanks that were highlighted in the report. Acton’s international reach has expanded greatly in recent years through the expansion of its affiliate program, the publication of web content in several languages, and its association with groups like the Atlas Economic Research Foundation. The translation of the Acton documentaries Call of the Entrepreneur, Birth of Freedom and the Effective Stewardship DVD curriculum into more than a dozen languages has also made them available to think tanks and broadcast networks outside the United States. The Call of the Entrepreneur has been translated into Spanish, Italian, Mandarin Chinese, German, Polish, French, Slovak, Romanian and (in 2011) Portuguese.

For more on the 2010 Global Go To Think Tanks Rankings, and to download the report, please visit

Link to news release here.