ABSTRACT
The long-term trends in funding for public interest law give reason for cautious optimism. The overall funding picture showed a 51 percent increase in total resources between 1975 and 1983, from $70,107,500 to $105,588,110. The nuclear arms race, the Central American conflict, and other emerging issues are jostling aside the grant applications of traditional advocacy organizations in the funding marketplace. Although the Ford Foundation began in 1979 to phase out funding to ten public interest law firms that it had helped establish in earlier years, it remained an important funder for organizations in the survey. With the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, government funding for social and legal services was slashed. Both in aggregate and average-group terms, it rose slightly between 1975 and 1979 and then plummeted between 1979 and 1983, the aggregate by 12 percent and the average group by 29 percent.
