Goals of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation was formed in 1991 to advance the cause of political and economic freedom.
The Foundation has five broad goals:
- To promote the widest possible acceptance of democracy, market principles, the rule of law, and strong defence
- To encourage strong transatlantic links between Britain, Europe, and North America
- To assist and encourage the peoples of the former communist countries and other oppressive regimes across the world as they adopt democracy
- To foster greater contact between Western nations and those of the Middle East in the region's search for a lasting peace with security
- To further free trade throughout the world
Work done by the Margaret Thatcher Foundation
The Foundation has pursued an innovative and imaginative educational program. Drawing on Lady Thatcher's worldwide standing and expertise, it raised funds and helped to finance projects promoting Western business, legal, and technical education, particularly in former communist countries. It has collaborated with charities, schools, universities, and major cultural institutions, such as the Library of Congress.
The Foundation has also funded the distribution to university libraries around the world of The Complete Public Statements of Margaret Thatcher 1945-2000, a remarkable Oxford University Press CD-ROM offering the full text of every public statement Lady Thatcher has ever made, rendering her political thought and record in office the most accessible of any major political figure, alive or dead. Its most recent project has been the development of this website, placing a significant proportion of the disk and other public papers on line for educational benefit.
The Foundation raises funds wholly through private philanthropy. The Margaret Thatcher Foundation is incorporated as a nonprofit educational organisation in Washington, D.C., and is recognized as a qualifying non-profit corporation under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. Contributions are, therefore, tax-deductible to the extent that the law provides.
Volunteers & interns
We work with a number of internship programmes and sometimes have roles for volunteers. Please email to find out more.
Finding the Oxford University Press CD-ROM
Some 1,600 university libraries around the world hold the CD-ROM.
The CD-ROM is out of print, but a stock is held at the Churchill Archive Centre and can be purchased from them for £40, licensed for individual use.
Buy the CD-ROM from this link.
citation & archiving of site content
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation is committed to making the materials on this site permanently available in digital form. To that purpose, digital copies have been lodged in the Thatcher Archive at Churchill College, Cambridge, where they may be freely consulted. They can be cited as deriving from the 'Thatcher MSS (digital collection)'.
Document URLs are stable. You can confidently cite documents on the site by quoting the full URL, or simply using the 6 digit document identification number at the end (perhaps appropriate if you are quoting from the site many times in the course of an article or book).
For example,
https://www.margaretthatcher.org/document/104078
is the URL for MT's "Remarks on becoming Prime Minister (St Francis's Prayer)", dated 4 May 1979. The document i.d. is 104078.
Chasing a citation you can search directly for a document by typing the document i.d. in the keyword box on the site search screen.
Pages on the site can also safely be cited by URL because they will remain at the same address indefinitely, although some may no longer be advertised via links on the site (e.g., a page that is out of date and not thought worth revising). These 'retired' pages can be viewed here.
intellectual property
All material on the site is freely available for private and educational use (such as the preparation of teaching material) provided no part of it is republished online or in print. Republication in any form is forbidden without further permission. License to use Lady Thatcher's copyright can be arranged through this site: please email us.
Fraudulent use of the Foundation's name
The Margaret Thatcher Foundation has no connection with the "Margaret Thatcher Fund" advertised on the website thatcherfund.org. The Foundation has no programmes in Africa. It does not solicit donations online, or request payments for "psychometric tests".
Other scams emerge from time to time. Always beware unsolicited requests for funds or information from any source. We never make them.