[sageikosa]

You're thinking investment markets, not philanthropic giving markets. Any think tank is competitively attempting to gain funds to stay afloat. Some do this by lobbying for grants, some by soliciting private donations. But there's a finite amount of capacity to fund think tanks regardless of the source of income.

Google can certainly find other think tanks they like better.

[humanrebar]

I can get behind this description. Though it does mean that even the most communist and/or totalitarian governments have internal markets if source-agnostic-budget counts. I'm not sure how people with an anti-capitalist ideological bent would respond to that framing.

[SerLava]

They probably wouldn't like it, but a market is a good way to describe those types of transactional backroom deal.