Clinton Foundation snubbed by the pope, Elton John, Janet Yellen
Charity struggling to regain luster amid political scandals
By Kenneth P. Vogel and Noah Weiland
09/26/15 08:00 AM EDT
The Clinton Foundation invited everyone from Pope Francis and Leonardo DiCaprio to Bill de Blasio and Janet Yellen to its showcase gathering starting Saturday in New York City, according to multiple sources familiar with the planning.
But those invitations were among the dozens turned down by all manner of celebrities, dignitaries and donors, according to the sources, who said the controversies swirling around the foundation and Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign have made some bold-faced names and donors wary of the foundation.
The glitzy Clinton Global Initiative gathering in New York, which has the lofty title “The Future of Impact,” was supposed to have been a celebration of the accomplishments of the $2-billion Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation’s past work as it pivots towards a future with Chelsea Clinton at the helm.
Instead, it’s become emblematic of the foundation’s struggles to regain its luster, while scaling back some of its ambitions and restructuring amid heightened scrutiny of its internal workings, the diminished role of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the prospect that former president Bill Clinton also could be forced to step back.
By Josh Gerstein
“They've had a lot of rejections from people – both for membership renewals and speaking roles this year between the campaign, Hillary not being at CGI this year, bad press,” said one person who has worked on planning foundation events.
Foundation officials shrugged off questions about the rejections, explaining in an email “We’re extremely pleased with the response to our invitations. This year’s line-up is extremely strong.”
Arianna Huffington, a past CGI participant who was asked to participate in a panel, instead opted to travel to Aspen, Colo., for an exclusive “thought leaders” conference hosted by television host Charlie Rose. That wasn’t a value judgment on the Clinton Foundation, its work or long-term viability, said Huffington, whose media company has partnered with the foundation.
“I do plan to stay involved and very much hope recent controversies will not limit the foundation's effectiveness and the incredible work it is doing,” she emailed Thursday, as she traveled to Aspen. “I hope it will continue to be as effective because it has a lot of work to do! And Chelsea can appeal to a whole new generation of millennial billionaires and heirs including in the Arab world.”
But a handful of corporate donors have dropped their sponsorships, and sources who have recruited participants for CGI say it’s become increasingly difficult to raise money from large companies for meetings in which executives would just as likely appear on panels with Chelsea Clinton, rather than one of her parents. This weekend's draft program shows the former first daughter is featured about as many times as her father. Hillary Clinton had been tentatively slated to lead a panel on economic opportunity for women, documents show, but she has distanced herself from the foundation since launching her presidential campaign.
The documents, reviewed by POLITICO, also show that the foundation had hoped to land either Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen or French economist Thomas Piketty to deliver a presentation on income inequality. Both declined, as did Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg. Rock legend Elton John was invited to receive an award for his efforts to fight AIDS, but he’s not coming, and neither is New York City Mayor de Blasio. He had been invited as a guest rather than as a speaker and notably has refused to endorse Clinton, despite having managed her successful U.S. Senate campaign in 2000.
20150924_bernie_sanders_gty_1160.jpg
Zuckerberg had a scheduling conflict, while a Fed official pointed out that no sitting chair has attended the annual CGI meetings. Piketty said his decision had nothing to do with the presidential campaign, or his opinions of the Clintons and their economic policies. “I'm not particularly a fan, but I am not a non-fan either,” he wrote in an email, adding that during the 2008 Democratic primary, he “preferred Hillary's health plan to Obama's. In 2016, it would be nice to have a contested debate so that we can make an opinion. Anyway, this is not really [the] issue: I almost never go to this kind of meeting, simply because I want to concentrate on my work!”
Likewise, a White House spokesman said President Barack Obama’s decision to skip CGI for the first time since taking office stemmed from his busy schedule ― not the fact that Vice President Joe Biden is actively weighing running against Clinton for the Democratic presidential nomination.
British Prime Minister David Cameron and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were among the foreign heads of state who turned down invitations, according to sources, though they have not attended previous CGI meetings. Among those who are scheduled to appear are Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras, Italian Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko.
To be sure, it’s not unusual for organizers of major conferences with dozens of speakers to be turned down by some invitees, but sources who have worked with CGI say the percentage of regrets seems higher this year. They attribute that to politically charged suggestions that foundation donors ― and particularly foreign donors ― sought or received favors from Hillary Clinton’s state department, as well as media scrutiny of the foundation’s finances and staff.
At least five major companies that sponsored the 2014 Clinton Global Initiative have backed out of sponsoring this year’s meeting.
One past donor who did not re-up told POLITICO that the decision was based primarily on concerns about the effectiveness of the foundation, which were fueled by questions about its record-keeping and heavy spending on travel and administration. “Political exposure was another factor that we had to take into account more recently,” said the donor.
As the weekend's events begin, there’s plenty of star power and financial might on the agenda, including Mario Batali, Jessica Biel, Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Ashley Judd, Edward Norton, George Soros, Charlize Theron, Neil deGrasse Tyson and top executives from Chinese internet giant Alibaba, Barclays, Cisco, Gap and Xerox.
And CGI’s CEO Bob Harrison, in an op-ed on Fox Business this week dismissed scrutiny of dropped sponsorships as “another example of critics trying to politicize philanthropy, and the facts don’t bear out the argument.” Sponsorship revenue has actually increased from 2014, while the turnover rate has declined, he declared.
“Similar to other thought-leader events such as the World Economic Forum, every year some sponsors leave, new sponsors sign on, and the overwhelming majority choose to continue their support,” he wrote, citing four new sponsors ― Apple, Cardinal Health, GlaxoSmith Kline and Xerox.
Exclusive: Lena Dunham interview's Hillary Clinton
He stressed that CGI’s corporate sponsors, which pledge to invest in various global humanitarian and social welfare projects, “not only provide funding, but also apply their expertise in management, technology, manufacturing, distribution and research to help non-governmental organizations and foundations be more effective. These corporate commitments are providing better access to education and healthcare in the developing world, creating jobs and improving infrastructure in the U.S, and protecting the environment.”
The sprawling 2,000-employee Clinton Foundation is also looking to become more internally efficient under its new CEO, former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala.
She started work in June and last month brought in IBM to do an exhaustive survey of employees, urging them during a staff meeting to be “brutally honest” in their assessments, said sources. And, after a tour of the charity’s Manhattan headquarters, several employees were asked to clean up their cubicles, while dishes and Tupperware in a shared office kitchen were thrown away. That rubbed some employees the wrong way, said one person familiar with the effort to declutter the office. It came across as "cleaning house literally to start, I guess,” said the person.
Foundation officials suggested that the building staff, rather than Shalala, prompted the cleaning. “Facilities encourages people to keep their space clean from time to time and that was going on well before Donna got here,” they wrote in an email.
When Shalala accepted the job, she told The Chronicle of Philanthropy “I love messy institutions,” clarifying “my cup of tea is very complex situations and very complex institutions and helping people to kind of think through their strategies and working their way out of issues.”
The foundation has taken on an increasingly wide-range of initiatives from fights against AIDS and childhood obesity, to stopping elephant poaching in Africa. But sources familiar with the foundation’s inner workings worry that it has failed to rein in in-fighting or program costs. It also has not substantively expanded its ongoing fundraising to support programmatic growth ― particularly given the voluntary restrictions on fundraising during the presidential campaign and any subsequent Clinton presidency.
The foundation also agreed not to hold CGI meetings abroad during Hillary Clinton's campaign, which has raised questions about the fates of a handful of employees on the initiative’s international team. A number of the foundation's employees have decamped recently for the campaign, and more are expected to do so after the four-day CGI conference, sources said. The uncertainty has led foundation staff to privately wonder whether this might be the last CGI meeting for the foreseeable future.
And Shalala’s survey, which comes after high-profile organizational changes, has some officials further on edge, said the sources, who said there have been hushed conversations about how long Shalala herself intends to stick around. It was widely noted, they said, when Shalala, in her farewell letter to the University of Miami, where she had been president, concluded “I intend to return to the faculty when my leave is over. Until then, my thanks and best wishes.”
A university spokeswoman downplayed Shalala’s word choice, suggesting she’s not returning anytime soon. “I don't think it's literally that she is on leave from the University. She ended her term as President on her own volition. There could always be a future on the faculty.”
And foundation officials said in an email “it's standard for tenured professors to have the option to return. She doesn’t have any timetable for returning to U.M. but if she does it will be to teach a limited number of classes that wouldn’t interfere with her position here.”
Read more:
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/09/clinton-foundation-snubbed-pope-elton-john-janet-yellen-214091#ixzz3n3Hmq0uY
