If you're like me, you've been wondering: What the heck does the Clinton Foundation actually do?
And, in fact, before criticizing the increasingly clear cut influence peddling of the Clinton Foundation, it is usual to genuflect before its supposed good works. What about these good works?
A fascinating article in Current Affairs by Nathan J. Robinson provides more insight into that question than anything I've seen. (Thanks to Andy McCarthy for pointing out the article.)
This is a very long quote but I don't think your eyes will glaze over: '
Most of the claims about the Foundation’s efficacy have little basis in any actual reported facts. Instead, it is simply assumed that the organization has tremendous humanitarian accomplishments, without any serious inquiry into what these are. An examination of the actual available evidence, as opposed to the PR claims of the Foundation and its boosters, suggests the need for far greater skepticism about the organization’s charitable acts in addition to its fundraising.
First, the Clinton Foundation is a strange type of “charity” to begin with. The New York Times has described the Foundation as “more a nonprofit global consulting firm than a traditional philanthropy.” Contrary to James Carville’s claim that the Foundation is “taking money from rich people and giving it to poor people,” its primary mission, says the Times, is “not to provide direct humanitarian aid.” Instead it “is known for sending bright but inexperienced recent graduates to work as technical advisers to government ministries.”
Ira Magaziner, who heads the independent Clinton Health Access Initiative, has said of their work that “the whole thing is bankable… It’s a commercial proposition. This is not charity.” Instead of aid, the Clinton Foundation spends much of its effort “creating new markets,” finding lucrative investment opportunities in the developing world for Western private capital. These have included everything from “using business methods to streamline fertilizer markets in Africa” to “working with credit card companies to expand the volume of low-cost loans offered to poor inner city residents.” (Note that typically, enticing poor people into taking on large amounts of credit card debt is not among the activities of a charitable foundation.) Bill Clinton is open about the fact that in this work, he is trying to help corporations profit from the developing world. He attempts to “reinvent philanthropy” as a lucrative enterprise for his partners because, in his words, “I think it’s wrong to ask anyone to lose money.”
It’s hard to keep track of all the “commercial propositions” the Foundation is engaged in, because it operates in a highly unusual fashion. Ordinarily, charitable foundations make grants to outside organizations. But only 15% of the Clinton Foundation’s spending is on charitable grants. Instead, it spends most of its money on its in-house programs, whose efficacy can be far more difficult to track. The task is made even more difficult thanks to the Foundation’s ongoing allergy to transparency.
Ira Magaziner, who heads the independent Clinton Health Access Initiative, has said of their work that “the whole thing is bankable… It’s a commercial proposition. This is not charity.” Instead of aid, the Clinton Foundation spends much of its effort “creating new markets,” finding lucrative investment opportunities in the developing world for Western private capital. These have included everything from “using business methods to streamline fertilizer markets in Africa” to “working with credit card companies to expand the volume of low-cost loans offered to poor inner city residents.” (Note that typically, enticing poor people into taking on large amounts of credit card debt is not among the activities of a charitable foundation.) Bill Clinton is open about the fact that in this work, he is trying to help corporations profit from the developing world. He attempts to “reinvent philanthropy” as a lucrative enterprise for his partners because, in his words, “I think it’s wrong to ask anyone to lose money.”
It’s hard to keep track of all the “commercial propositions” the Foundation is engaged in, because it operates in a highly unusual fashion. Ordinarily, charitable foundations make grants to outside organizations. But only 15% of the Clinton Foundation’s spending is on charitable grants. Instead, it spends most of its money on its in-house programs, whose efficacy can be far more difficult to track. The task is made even more difficult thanks to the Foundation’s ongoing allergy to transparency.
Partly because of that, Charity Navigator, a watchdog group, at one point added the Clinton Foundation to its watch list of problematic charities, and still does not rate the organization because its “atypical business model. . . doesn’t meet our criteria.” The Clinton Health Access Initiative has refused to allow the charity evaluation organization GiveWell to analyze its outcomes, and the Better Business Bureau has listed the Clinton Foundation as failing to meet the basic standards for reporting the effectiveness of its programs. Bill Allison of the pro-transparency Sunlight Foundation has gone much further, and said that the organization operates as a “slush fund for the Clintons.”
Indeed, certain Foundation expenditures have appeared unduly lavish, and difficult to justify. The Foundation spends $8 million in annual travel expenses (the Clintons fly on private jets), bought a first-class plane ticket to bring Natalie Portman (and her prized Yorkie) to an event, and funds a “glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities.” Some costs are outsourced to others, and universities that invite Bill Clinton to speak can find themselves hit with unexpected invoices for $1,400 hotel phone bills and $700 dinners-for-two.
The annual summit of the Clinton Global Initiative has become, according to some, particularly unseemly. NPR’s Adam Davidson, who has moderated panels at the CGI, has professed a skepticism of how much good is actually done, suggesting that the Foundation offers a “theater” of charity without the actual results:
There is a real creepy vibe there. It’s all about buying access. It’s incredibly expensive. It costs hundreds of thousands to go, and you meet all these people selling their private equity start-ups. You spend more money to get more access. There is this creepy theater that happens where you have a big CEO up there with President Clinton bathing each other in love about how generous and wonderful they are and how much they care about the world…’ It feels like the worst version of an elite selling access to the aspirational, creating a theater of doing good, but it is all about something else. It really feels gross.
In other words, the foundation appears to be a vehicle to virtue signal . . . while making out like a bandit.