http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-202/2016/08/05/daily-202-lessons-from-my-search-for-donald-trump-s-personal-giving-to-charity/57a3eb5fcd249a7e29d0cf7a/I’ve spent the last few months trying to prove Donald Trump right about something important.
So far, I’ve failed.
Trump has promised to give millions of dollars of his own money to charity. Trying to find evidence of them, I first looked at the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Dead end. Tax records show no gifts from Trump to his namesake foundation since 2008. Then I looked at the Trump campaign's official list of his donations. Dead end. That list included thousands of free rounds of golf, given away by Trump's golf courses. But no gifts of cash from Trump's own pocket. His campaign said those gifts did exist. It just wouldn't say who got them.
So I kept looking, starting with the individual charities that Trump seemed closest to. He'd attended their galas. Praised them on Twitter. Given them cash from the Trump Foundation's dwindling pot of money.
I've tried 259 of those charities so far.
I've found one gift, out of Trump's own pocket, between 2008 and this May. In 2009, he apparently gave a gift worth less than $10,000 to the Police Athletic League in New York. (In May, under pressure from the media, Trump made good on his own pledge to give $1 million to a veterans' charity).
But in all those dead ends, I’ve learned a few lessons about Trump, and the way he seems to view charity.
So here’s what I found, when I wasn’t finding anything:
1.) Trump does see charity -- or at least the appearance of charity -- as an important part of his public imageThis started back in the 1980s, when Trump first became a national star with his book, "The Art of the Deal." Even then, his public persona had two very different sides. On the one hand, Trump portrayed himself as a walking avatar of wealth, so rich he didn't need more money. On the other hand...here he was, asking for your money, trying to sell you a book. Trump split the difference by promising to give the book's proceeds to charity.
In the 2000s, when Trump returned to the national spotlight, he picked up the habit again. At various times, he promised to give away the proceeds of "The Apprentice," "Trump University" and a real-estate rental to Moammar Gaddafi. As much as Trump cultivated the image of himself as a hard-nosed, high-living businessman, he seemed not to think that one dimension was enough. Until recently, Trump's corporate biography summed his life up into two parts: "a deal-maker without peer, and an ardent philanthropist."
2.) But Trump seems to want to acquire his reputation for charity as cheaply as possible, and with other people's money if he canIn all, I've identified about $7.8 million that Trump has given to charity since 1984. That's a great deal of money, but it is a rather paltry sum for a billionaire. If Trump is worth $10 billion now, as he claims, then his lifetime charity would be equal to 0.08 percent of his current net worth. Star Wars' George Lucas, who is tied with Trump on Forbes' list of billionaires, gave $925 million to charity in a single recent year.
Despite this relatively low total, Trump has employed a pair of strategies to make his charitable impact seem more impressive.
For one thing, he frequently attends charity galas and events, where attendance carries the implication (but not the requirement) that guests have made donations to the cause. I've even found galas where Trump was given a title like "honorary chairman" -- with the implication of an even bigger gift -- but actually gave nothing. In fact, Trump often *made* money on these galas, since they were held at his Florida clubs. Several of the charities said they were glad to have Trump as the honorary chairman anyway, since Trump's name drew a crowd.
Separately, Trump seems to exploit the assumption that the money in the Donald J. Trump Foundation came originally from Donald J. Trump's pocket. It doesn't, and hasn't for years. Instead, the foundation's biggest recent gifts came from wrestling moguls Vince and Linda McMahon, who gave a total $5 million (and won't comment about why). Since then, Trump has been effectively giving the McMahons' money away, but -- because his name is on the foundation -- the recipients often give Trump the credit.
3.) Trump is left with a charitable legacy that is small and scattershot, with little sustained commitment to any one causeThe two biggest gifts of Trump's life have been to veterans' groups: $1 million for the New York City Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1984, and the $1 million he gave to a veterans' charity this May.
In between, however, his public giving showed little focus on veterans' issues, or any other specific causes. The largest gifts from the Donald J. Trump Foundation have been split among local New York charities, Palm Beach galas, conservative political groups -- and one-off gifts, like one Trump apparently paid to settle a lawsuit at one of his golf courses. By spreading out his money this way, Trump has increased the short-term visibility of his charity, but diminished its long-term impact in any one place.
The result is that -- although Trump has put his name on commercial ventures from steaks to books to casinos -- he has left few monuments to himself in the world of philanthropy. Trump's son Eric, by contrast, started a foundation focused on children's cancer research. Now, at age 32, Eric Trump has a surgical center named for him at St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital in Memphis.
The only things I've found that a charity named in honor of Donald Trump are far less impressive. There's a bench in Central Park, and a single chair in a theater in New Jersey.
One last thing, readers: If you know of any donations Trump gave to a charity out of his own pocket --- or if you've spotted another monument to his giving -- please let me know! I'm at fahrenthold@washpost.com.
