About the Bastiat Society

Through the Bastiat Society program, AIER makes the ideas that enable peaceful trade and human flourishing available to the everyday business person. We are a global network of passionate professionals promoting freedom.

Our goal is to have a Bastiat Society Chapter in every city around the world – expanding our message in a grassroots manner.

Our audience is full of people like you.  passionate professionals. liberty-minded individuals. principled leaders. people like you. 

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AIER’s Bastiat Society is geared for the business community—a highly leveraged, influential, and engaged audience. Apart from being active in the Society, our members and attendees are typically involved in various local issues, civic groups, trade associations, and fraternal organizations. Some are major philanthropists.

We act as a key bridge between the academic community and the business community because, of all potential audiences for academic ideas, the business community is among the hardest to reach. Business leaders have companies to run, employees to take care of, and families who deserve their attention.

The typical business person has limited spare time and is reluctant to take on additional commitments. Yet these people also have the most to lose if capitalism is undermined and economic freedom is replaced by central planning and more government intervention. But how can research institutes, foundations, and think-tanks get business people involved in a meaningful way—besides simply asking them for donations? This has been a problem facing the liberty-minded organizations for nearly 60 years.

We bring principled leaders together to discuss these ideas. 

A DIFFERENT KIND OF PROGRAM

It is extremely difficult to engage the business community using a traditional think-tank model. The business community is dispersed, while most think-tanks are located in Washington, D.C., London, or some other capital city. The average business person is simply not going to travel thousands of miles to attend a conference, book release, or public lecture and it is costly for institutions to take their events “on the road.”

The Bastiat Society takes a different approach. We examined other successful business groups like the: Rotary Club, Stonemasons, Chamber of Commerce, and Exchange Club. These organizations flourish because they are bottom-up and rely on local stakeholders to execute their mission. We developed a similar, dispersed operating structure with this in mind. Our Chapters run independently – mainly focusing on hosting monthly events.

Our network of volunteer-led chapters allows academics, authors, and researchers to engage the business community without needing to plan remote meetings, find a local audience, or promote events in distant cities. Our chapters and their volunteers do that for them. All the speaker has to do is show up and present their ideas

WILL YOU TAKE THE LEAD?

One thing we have learned from our steady growth is that our concept works. Other groups have said the business community was an impossible audience to organize and would never be interested in discussing academic ideas, but we continue to prove them wrong. Because of the Bastiat Society program, over 30,000 business people have gathered at over 1,500 events to discuss the ideas fundamental to human prosperity and freedom. And we continue to grow!

We continue to make the ideas of liberty, free markets, and free people available to the everyday business person. Our hope is to have a Bastiat Society Chapter in every city the world in the near future – expanding AIER’s mission, classical liberal values, and the morality of capitalism to millions of people.

If your city does not have a Bastiat Society chapter, there is certainly a business community ready and waiting for someone to take the lead. Are you that person?

HOW WE HELP

In some ways, the Bastiat Society program operates like a franchise. Our chapter directors run their chapters independently, designing their own programs, and raise most of their own funds. However, they benefit from Bastiat Society program branding, marketing efforts, media exposure, and research. They also have access to staff and a support system aimed at helping them start, operate, and grow their local chapters.

Taking advantage of our website, research, a growing list of strategic partnershipsprogram grants, and our pre-designed AIER Speaker Series, new chapters are immediately plugged into an existing (and expansive) network. After establishing a chapter, directors are able to quickly begin booking speakers, planning meetings, and attracting an audience.

While our chapters concentrate on their local efforts, AIER constantly promotes the Bastiat Society program by representing the network at conferences and events around the world. We help you make an impact by reducing the amount of redundant, back-end work and allowing you to focus on the impact you’re making at a local level. 

Email

BastiatProgram@aier.org

AIER - American Institute for Economic Research