The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation last year raised $178 million ― its biggest annual fundraising haul in five years ― as it prepared for a possible future without its two biggest names.
The fundraising tally was revealed in tax filings publicly released Monday night. They showed that the foundation finished 2014 with by far the largest cash reserves in its 17-year history ― $354 million (against only $22 million in liabilities).
Nearly half of those reserves at the end of the year appeared to be held in an endowment that the sprawling $2-billion global charity scrambled to raise in preparation for the absence of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her presidential campaign and possibly her presidency, and the prospect that former president Bill Clinton also could step back.
The foundation this year has seen some donors back away amid a storm of campaign-driven controversies surrounding donations from people, companies and governments with business before Hillary Clinton’s state department, as well as scrutiny of the foundation’s finances and staff.
The foundation has worked to right itself this year under the leadership of its vice-chair Chelsea Clinton and its new CEO, Donna Shalala. In a letter to foundation supporters released Monday night with the tax filings, Shalala wrote that in 2014 the foundation “continued to grow our endowment to make our work sustainable in the future.”
The foundation last year invested the endowment, which now includes about $250 million in donations and pledges, through a firm called Summit Rock Advisers, where Chelsea Clinton’s best friend Nicole Davison Fox is managing director. The 2014 filings do not list any fees or commissions paid to Summit Rock, though they do show that the foundation paid more than $600,000 for “endowment plan development” to a fundraising firm called Community Counselling Service Co.
Shalala took over in June, five months after the abrupt resignation of Chelsea Clinton’s handpicked candidate to run the foundation, Eric Braverman. He had occasionally clashed with a handful of Clinton loyalists including Bruce Lindsey, who have surrounded the former president for decades and who helped start the foundation with nine staffers in Little Rock. They grew it into an international charitable powerhouse that now has 2,200 employees around the world and various initiatives and affiliates, including fighting AIDS in Africa and childhood obesity at home.
The tax filings show that Braverman received $532,000 in salary and benefits in 2014 ― by far the foundation’s highest paid employee, well ahead of the $395,000 paid to Lindsey, who is chairman of the foundation’s board.
None of the Clintons are listed as drawing a salary from the foundation. The filing indicates that Chelsea Clinton — who sources say is not a regular presence in the foundation’s Manhattan headquarters — works 35 hours per week for the foundation and its affiliates, compared to 25 hours a week for her former president father. Hillary Clinton was listed as having worked 20 hours a week before she resigned in April to launch her presidential campaign.
