One Year After Hillary’s Loss, Have Clinton Foundation Donors Stopped Giving?

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton’s critics suggested that donors to her family’s foundation were seeking access or political influence from her family — and her prospective White House. A year after the election, Donald Trump is president, the Clinton Foundation has only a handful of new corporate donors — and many of its previous sponsors have not made new contributions.

Most of the companies that have previously donated to the Clinton Foundation didn’t contribute in the second quarter of 2017, according to the organization’s website, although some, including Acxiom Corporation, BTIG LLC, Google and Starkey Hearing Technologies, have. Cities, countries, foundations and other nonprofits also donate to the foundation, and some contributed in 2017.

It’s impossible to know precisely what’s happened to Clinton Foundation fundraising in the year since Secretary Clinton lost. As a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, the foundation submits financial information to the Internal Revenue Service once per year, and information on both 2016 and 2017 is not yet publicly available. But International Business Times contacted nearly 50 major corporations that had previously donated to the foundation, asking if they had made new contributions after the 2016 presidential campaign. Thirty of them did not respond or declined to comment on the questions. Of the 18 that did, all said they had not made new donations.

Previous Clinton Foundation donations from many companies came in the form of membership, sponsorship and conference fees for the annual Clinton Global Initiative event, which the foundation discontinued roughly a year ago. Nearly half of the major companies contacted by IBT gave money only for the Global Initiative, according to the foundation’s website. “We donated a total of $45,000 between 2010-14 for membership in the Clinton Global Initiative,” Verizon told IBT. “We haven’t given anything since ‘14 and have no plans to do so.”

Other companies donated to specific foundation projects in the past but haven’t given this year and don’t plan on doing so in the near future. American manufacturing company Corning “contributed $150,000 to the Clinton Foundation [in 2013] to support an initiative to inspire and advance the full participation of women in society,” a company spokesperson told IBT. The company has not contributed since before the 2016 election and has no plans to donate in 2017.

Some companies consulted by IBT have programs that match charitable donations given by their employees, who can choose from many charities, and a few have given small amounts to the Clinton Foundation in recent years for this reason. In addition, companies can donate goods and services, as opposed to cash, which aren’t reflected in the foundation’s list of contributors.

Companies that told IBT they have not donated since the 2016 election include Boeing, Chevron, Daimler Trucks North America, Dell, Duke Energy, General Electric, Humana, Lockheed Martin and UPS (via its foundation).

In February, then-president of the foundation Donna Shalala said that 2016 revenues were down “because of voluntary restrictions” and because Bill Clinton and his daughter Chelsea were busy campaigning for Mrs. Clinton instead of fundraising for the foundation. It took in around $300 million in 2015, down from $338 million in 2014.

During the Clinton campaign, the foundation began a process of reevaluation — at least partly in response to criticism about perceived conflicts of interest. In August 2016, during the general election, President Clinton announced that the Clinton Global Initiative was shutting down, and he laid out changes that the foundation would make should Secretary Clinton become president, including a commitment to accept donations only from U.S. citizens, foundations and permanent residents. The foundation has now resumed applying for foreign grants, according to BuzzFeed News.

Instead of stepping down from the Clinton Foundation board, as Bill Clinton planned to do if his wife became president, he moved up from director to chair of the board. Chelsea remained vice chair, and Shalala joined the board while stepping down as president and CEO. Hillary Clinton returned to fundraising for the foundation in August 2017.

In early 2017, the foundation finished shutting down the Clinton Global Initiative and laid off the majority of the initiative’s roughly 100 staff members. While the foundation is spinning off some programs, it’s “scaling up” others. Raising money is a big priority after two years of reduced fundraising.

A Clinton Foundation spokesperson provided the following statement to IBT:

“The Clinton Foundation has continued to make important progress in 2017 on some of the biggest challenges facing the U.S. and the world. We’re engaging with a wide range of partners across business, government, and civil society who help make our life-changing work possible. We’ve received support from solar companies who are helping us promote renewable energy and provide relief supplies to the Caribbean; corporations that are working with us in the U.S. to fight the opioid epidemic and childhood obesity; and publishing companies who support our work to promote early childhood development.”