Many leaders of the New Right are, like Scaife, men in their thirties and forties who, for one reason or another, see themselves as outside the old conservative establishment. They share not just a traditional free-market, anti- Communist view of the world, but also a sophisticated ability to analyze the forces that shape American society. This analysis has led to the creation of myriad New Right lobbying groups and think-tanks whose techniques are drawn directly from citizens groups and New Left organizations of the 1960s. (''Ten years ago the liberals kind of had a copyright on organizations outside of government," says Leon Reed, an aide on defense matters to Senator William Proxmire. 'At some point the Right realized that all of the things like shareholder resolutions and testifying before Congress can be used by anyone.") This analysis also accounts for the tremendous emphasis the New Right puts on the news media, particularly television. No longer, as in Spiro Agnew's day, are the media seen simply as e enemy: rather, they are regarded as an institution which, like any other, is capable of being influenced as well as intimidated.

Scaife, with his money, his interest in politics and the media, and his long-held conservative views, quickly became a key New Right backer. Indeed, the rise of the New Right coincided with a substantial increase in Scaife's power to assist it. In 1973, he became chairman of the Sarah Scaife Foundation; within a year, a total break occurred between him and his sister. Since their mother's death, Cordelia Scaife May had tried to restrain her brother from shifting family charitable donations away from Sarah Scaife's priorities - population control and art - and toward conservative causes. After the break, she apparently gave up.

Scaife beneficiaries take pains to draw a distinction between Scaife as an individual and the Scaife charitable entities, each of which is presided over by several trustees, of which Scaife is but one. The virtually complete shift from Sarah Scaife's priorities to Richard Scaife's is, however, clear evidence of his overriding influence. The New York- based Population Council, for example, has been given no further Scaife funds since 1973, after receiving nearly $16 million during the previous thirteen years.

The Sarah Scaife Foundation, the Carthage Foundation, and the Allegheny Foundation, whose donations are a matter of public record, do give to many civic projects as well as to Richard Scaife's political charities. The Allegheny Foundation in particular has been a generous benefactor of such local causes as a major restoration now in progress in Pittsburgh. But the clearest indicator of which charities lie 45 closest to Richard Scaife's heart is the giving pattern of the Sarah Scaife Grandchildren's Trust. Trusts, unlike foundations, do not have to give any public accounting of how they spend their income. According to information privately made available, the grandchildren's trust has virtually ceased giving to organizations other than conservative and New Right groups.

Total donations from Scaife entities to conservative causes currently run about $10 million a year. (This amount, of course, does not reflect any personal contributions Scaife may make, about which no information is publicly available.) Among better-known conservative funders, the John M. Olin Foundation gave a total to all causes of $5.2 million in 1979, while the Adolph Coors Foundation gave away $2.5 million. Among funders perceived as left of center, Stewart Mon, heir to a General Motors fortune, gives away, through a trust, an average of between $700,000 and $1.3 million a year, according to an aide, while the Haymarket Peoples Fund gave $191,400 in 1979.

Sometimes, of course, a small amount of money at the fight time is of more value than millions later on. Since 1973, Scaife entities have provided seed money to as many as two dozen New Right organizations.

The power of Scaife money is well appreciated by those who come up against it. An official of a large foundation concerned with arms control says that whenever he and other foundation executives interested in military issues discuss possible projects, they "always inevitably think about all that Scaife money and what it's doing." The official adds that the conservative groups have a heck of a lot more influence [in defense matters] than the left-wing groups.

''A group like the National Strategy Information Center, which invites young academics to Colorado every year, can reach a lot of people very effectively,'' he says. 'There is no analogous program on the left. The left-wing groups are constantly scraping for money. And they're badly splintered. The only thing that is anything like a match for the right-wing groups is the Institute for Policy Studies.'' The IPS budget for 1980 was $1.6 million.

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