November 18, 2008
Clinton Foundation Donors Under Renewed Scrutiny
By Ian Wilhelm
As the possibility grows that Sen. Hillary Clinton will be asked to become secretary of state in an Obama administration, her husband’s philanthropy is under renewed scrutiny.
However, one major hurdle appears to be the nonprofit work of former president Bill Clinton.
Since leaving the White House, he has garnered hundreds of millions of dollars for his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., and the William J. Clinton Foundation, in New York, which provides AIDS medicines, health-care services, and agriculture assistance in Africa and elsewhere. What’s more, through his Clinton Global Initiative meetings, he says he has generated $46-billion in charitable commitments to fight poverty and ameliorate other social ills. (The Clinton Foundation is one of the most successful fund-raising organizations in the United States; it ranked No. 168 on The Chronicle’s most-recent list of the 400 charitable institutions that raise the most money.)
But concerns have been raised about the donors to Mr. Clinton’s philanthropic activities, especially foreign ones whose interests may conflict with the United States. What’s more, observers are asking questions about what access those contributors would have to Mrs. Clinton and other government officials in America and abroad.
During Mrs. Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president declined to disclose the names of donors to his library.
In an interview with The Chronicle in September, Mr. Clinton said he refused to name the benefactors because many gave on the condition that they remain anonymous and because no previous president had released the identities of library supporters.
“I’m basically pro-disclosure. My reluctance in the library case is not that I was ashamed of anyone who gave me money. It was because when the people gave me money, they had a reasonable expectation that their gifts would remain anonymous. To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t take money from anybody I shouldn’t have,” he said.
Other Charities Could Be Forced to Disclose Names
Mr. Clinton also cautioned that if he did reveal the names, it could lead to questions about anonymous giving to other nonprofit institutions.
“In other charitable contexts, people have a choice about whether to keep their donations private or not. A lot of people give anonymous gifts to universities. And you can raise the same kind of questions there: Did this [gift] compromise the university’s admissions policy? Did this compromise the university’s research policies?” he said.
Despite this, he expressed a willingness to be more public about the benefactors if his wife’s political jobs required that step.
“I suppose if Hillary were elected president, or maybe even if she had been nominated, we would have had to go back to the donors and at least disclose everyone that didn’t object to it. But I wouldn’t have any objection to it,” he said. “With foreign donors, but also with domestic ones, if there’s any question, we do exhaustive vetting. I can recall some money we haven’t taken and also some we did but only after more than a year of efforts to make sure that everything was okay.”
Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, said that if Mrs. Clinton is tapped to lead the State Department, Mr. Clinton would have to, at a minimum, reveal the names of all the donors to his nonprofit activities.
In addition, Mr. Scanlon said the former president would need to curtail his travel abroad as a philanthropist. His meetings with heads of state and dignitaries on such trips could hinder U.S. foreign policy, especially if Mr. Clinton brings contributors with him as he often does, Mr. Scanlon said.
“The potential for conflict is enormous,” he said.
But Steve Gunderson, president of the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers in Arlington, Va., said that a choice of Mrs. Clinton for a powerful administration position would benefit the nonprofit world.
“It means philanthropy will become more of a player,” he said.
Given her husband’s work, he said, the senator has a vast understanding of what foundations and wealthy humanitarians can do to help the world, knowledge she could use as secretary of state to forge greater collaboration between the U.S. government and nonprofit organizations.
Said Mr. Gunderson: “I don’t see conflicts, I see partnerships.”
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If the donations were given legally and received on the condition that they remain anonymous, I think Clinton is correct in not releasing the names.
Many nonprofits have received anonymous donations; do we really want to jeopardize those donations? Agencies receiving anonymous gifts are other presidential libraries, many non-profits, and maybe even some that readers of this column work for.
Is this a political vendetta or a reasonable request?
— annetta Nov 18, 05:13 PM #
A donor usually has other motivations than just “philanthropy” when they give money to non-profits, e.g. social capital. Hence, their identities should be disclosed. Those that object as they have enough social capital and prefer discretion will have no problem letting it be known to those that need to know who they are. The ones left are the ones that shouldnt be giving in the first place.
— magdalena Nov 30, 12:09 PM #