Research institute for stronger national security
Foundation for Defense of Democracies (fdd.org) scores 85 out of 100 on Brand Analyzer, placing it in the Strong Brand tier among Non-profit brands, Government brands, Media & Entertainment brands, in the 94th percentile of 19094 Non-profit brands.
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit, non-partisan research institute based in Washington, D.C., founded in 2001. It focuses on foreign policy and national security, providing fact-based research and analysis to policymakers, government officials, journalists, academics, and the public. FDD was originally funded by the Abramson Family Foundation and is led by CEO Mark Dubowitz. The organization positions itself as an independent authority aiming to defend democratic values and inform national security policy through expert-driven research.
| Brand Name | Foundation for Defense of Democracies |
|---|---|
| Domain | fdd.org |
| Industry | Non-profit, Government |
| Founded | 2001 |
| Headquarters | Washington, D.C. |
| CEO | Mark Dubowitz |
| Main Competitors | Council on Foreign Relations (94/100), Brookings Institution (89/100), Center for Strategic and International Studies (72/100), American Enterprise Institute (86/100), Washington Institute for Near East Policy (80/100), Heritage Foundation (85/100), Carnegie Endowment for International Peace (88/100) |
Moz Domain Authority 65/100 vs category average 48 / leader 97 - a strong backlink profile, so AI systems frequently encounter mentions of the brand.
Ranked #53,033 on the Tranco list of most-visited sites - strong traffic reinforces the brand's prominence to AI models.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies appears on Wikipedia but without a dedicated company entity, so AI models can confuse it with similarly named subjects.
The homepage meta description reads "The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a non-profit, non-partisan research institute focusing on foreign policy and national security." (Meta description: 19 words (ideal length). OG description present and descriptive) - this is the summary AI engines are most likely to quote.
Structured data on the homepage: 1 JSON-LD block(s), Organization schema, Breadcrumb/Website schema, og:title, og:description, og:image, og:type, Twitter cards, canonical. Adding FAQ schema would further help AI crawlers parse the brand's identity.
AI-crawler access: robots.txt present, no AI bot restrictions - robots.txt controls whether engines like GPTBot and ClaudeBot can read the site at all.
Detected tech stack: Cloudflare, WordPress, Ghost.
Social footprint: verified profiles on X (Twitter), Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, GitHub - consistent profiles reinforce the brand's identity across the web.
0 Reddit mentions - community discussion signals real-world reputation to AI models.
Live results from asking a general-purpose AI assistant about the brand, checked October 2026.
When asked "What is Foundation for Defense of Democracies?", Claude could identify the brand as of October 2026. The Foundation for Defense of Democracies is a Washington, D.C.-based think tank focused on national security, foreign policy, and counterterrorism, with particular emphasis on issues like Iran, sanctions policy, and combating extremism. It conducts research and advocacy aimed at Best known for Hawkish foreign policy research and advocacy, especially on Iran sanctions and counterterrorism.
When asked "Best brands similar to Foundation for Defense of Democracies?", Claude would recommend Foundation for Defense of Democracies as of October 2026. It's a prominent and influential think tank in the national security space, so it would come up naturally if someone asked about similar policy-focused non-profits.
Common questions people ask in Google, ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Perplexity, and other AI search engines.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies's main competitors in Non-profit: Council on Foreign Relations (94/100), Brookings Institution (89/100), Center for Strategic and International Studies (72/100), American Enterprise Institute (86/100), Washington Institute for Near East Policy (80/100).
Sources: Brand Analyzer scan
The Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) is a non-profit, non-partisan research institute headquartered in Washington, D.C., founded in 2001. It focuses on foreign policy and national security issues, conducting research and analysis intended to inform policymakers and the public. It was originally funded by the Abramson Family Foundation and is currently led by CEO Mark Dubowitz.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
Foundation for Defense of Democracies has moderate AI-search visibility, scoring 59/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI visibility composite (visibility 53, trust 69, recommendation 58). This estimates how likely AI engines like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity are to know, trust, and recommend the brand.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
Foundation for Defense of Democracies was founded in 2001. Foundation for Defense of Democracies operates in the Non-profit category. It is analyzed by Brand Analyzer across seven brand dimensions and AI-search visibility.
Sources: Wikidata
Foundation for Defense of Democracies is headquartered in Washington, D.C.. Foundation for Defense of Democracies operates in the Non-profit category.
Sources: Wikidata
Foundation for Defense of Democracies scores 58/100 on Brand Analyzer's AI recommendation signal, indicating it is reasonably likely to be surfaced when AI assistants like ChatGPT suggest Non-profit options. Recommendation depends on crawlability, structured data, and category authority; a Wikipedia presence helps.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
Foundation for Defense of Democracies can improve AI discoverability by strengthening structured data (Organization and FAQ schema), maintaining an accurate Wikipedia/Wikidata entity, earning authoritative citations, and keeping content crawlable for AI bots. Brand Analyzer measures these as visibility, trust, and recommendation signals.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
FDD offers research reports, policy analysis, and expert commentary on foreign policy and national security topics. Its output is intended to inform policymakers, government officials, journalists, academics, and the public, supporting debate and decision-making on national security issues.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
FDD's research and analysis are used by policymakers, government officials, journalists, academics, and members of the public who are interested in foreign policy and national security issues.
Sources: Foundation for Defense of Democracies official site
Foundation for Defense of Democracies scores 59/100 for AI visibility - how well ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Google AI Overviews can discover, identify and cite the brand.
Foundation for Defense of Democracies has a limited AI-visibility profile at 59/100 - a proxy for how readily ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's AI Overviews can recognise and cite it. Its strongest area is trust (69/100) and its weakest is visibility (53/100). It benefits from a Wikidata knowledge-graph entry, a global traffic rank of #53,033 (Tranco) and a Moz Domain Authority of 65/100. The main gaps holding it back: no clear Wikipedia entity to anchor it in LLM training data and no llms.txt to steer AI to its best pages. In a live check, Claude could already identify Foundation for Defense of Democracies from memory (October 2026) - a sign these signals are paying off.
The score combines seven dimensions - name quality, digital presence, visual identity, messaging clarity, trust foundation, AI discoverability, and brand authority - into a single objective benchmark.
Ranked closest to Foundation for Defense of Democracies: Felix (85/100), Family Equality (85/100), Feathr (85/100), Feed the Children (85/100).
A step up - brands to learn from: Workaway (91/100), WHYY (91/100).
Category leader: Change.org (97/100).
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