As the number of initiatives and targeted countries increased rapidly in the 1990s, diffusion mechanisms had to be rethought. Indirect and mediated forms of influence came to complement direct interaction and communication. Initially, Atlas had provided seed money in an ad hoc manner to "worthy" think tanks. From the early 2000s, it moved to distribute general purpose funds through grant competitions. Think tanks filled out a six-page grant application, accessible from the website. Atlas organized the review and selection. Most of the grants went to non-US think tanks (around 85 percent between 2004 and 2013). Grant competitions meant that Atlas could have leverage on and steer the agenda of network members. Whereas initially it had to persuade think-tank leaders to engage with certain debates, through grant competitions it could nudge them towards the issues it deemed important.

Dieter Plehwe, Quinn Slobodian & Philip Mirowski (eds.), Nine Lives of Neoliberalism, loc. 578