The Cato institute's fundamental purpose is to originate, disseminate, and increase understanding of public policies based on the principles of individual libery, limited government, free markets, and peace. Our ultimate goal, our vision, is to create free, open, and civil societies based on those libertarian principles. To achieve our mission and vision, we will focus on four key strategic themes:1. Engage best-in-class think tank talent operating in a high-performing organization; 2. Enable success with a growing, predictable, and sustainable funding engine; 3. Produce world-class, high-impact research and publications; 4. Expand and grow Cato's influence and brand strength though excellence in outreach.

1. Develop a growing, predictable, and sustainable funding engine2. Drive balanced focus of and resource allocation to the highest impact policy areas and issues -- short-term, mid-term, and long-term3. Identify, prioritize, target and impact opinion leaders4. Attract, develop, and retain best-in-class talent -- build depth and breadth of the talent pipeline5. Drive organizational alignment and productivity through excellence in performance management

International renown; credibility; reputation for non-partisanship; outstanding scholars; commitment to liberty for all; dedicated support staff; excellent communications and marketing teams; an active and engaged board of directors

Our purpose is to introduce alternative ideas into the public discussion. The short-term indicators we look to principally then are those in which people who shape policy convey our ideas to the general public and would include print and Internet citations, media interviews, congressional testimony and amicus briefs. Long-term cultural changes as evinced by public policy are not something that can be tracked, but -- as with all cultural changes -- if enough people share information and our publications are fresh, accurate and exciting, new perspectives will percolate and manifest themselves within the body politic through language, education and policy.

We have not yet succeeded in reducing the size & scope of government to an significant degree. We have succeeded in making the changes we advocate part of the public dialogue. Throughout 2012, Cato advocated policies that preserve individual sovereignty while decreasing government power in areas ranging from regulatory policy to education reform. The Institute has become a leading voice for the American principles of liberty, limited government and peace. “Cato has managed the difficult feat of becoming both a fount of true-blue libertarian ideas and a reputable source of information even for those who don't share its views," columnist Steve Chapman wrote in the Chicago Tribune last year. “It may be the most successful think tank in Washington. " The New York Times noted that “Over the years, Cato has successfully injected libertarian views into Washington policy and political debates, and given them mainstream respectability. " Ezra Klein in the Washington Post said “When I read Cato's take on a policy question, I can trust that it is informed by more than partisan convenience. The same can't be said for other think tanks in town. " The 2012 Global Go To Think Tanks Report rated Cato 2nd in “Top Domestic Economic Policy Think Tanks" (behind Brookings), 3rd in “Top Education Policy Think Tanks" (behind Brookings and Brown), and 4th in “Most Innovative Think Tanks" (behind Brookings, the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and The Peterson Institute of Economics). We are proud as well to note that in The Center for Global Development's new ranking of think tanks by public profile, Cato bested all other U. S. think tanks in the main category of “Aggregate Profile per Dollar Spent. " The report ranked Cato 3rd overall in terms of total profile, behind Heritage Foundation and Brookings Institution. However, the report noted that the annual budgets of both Brookings ($88. 9M) and Heritage ($80. 4M) are almost four times the size of Cato's ($23. 6M). As such, Cato outdid competing think tanks in the study's key metric of efficiency. A significant measure of our impact is the continual growth in outreach via the strategic use of web and multimedia technology. Our bandwidth numbers nearly doubled over the past year as did visits to DownsizingGovernment. org. Views of our live online programs & events nearly tripled. The2012 online response to our publications had a combined total of over 1M copies downloaded. In 2012 some 11M users visited Cato. org. There were more than 17K subscribers to our highly popular podcast series; millions of visits to our blog, Cato@Liberty, innovative online exchanges of ideas every month on Cato Unbound. We have more than 140K Facebook fans, nearly 157K Twitter followers, 20K YouTube subscribers. We reconfigured cato. org for mobile accessibility, device-specific layouts & touchscreen interactivity, which resulted in more than 1. 2M visitors through our iPhone and Android apps: In 2011 that figure was 10K.