The Charitable Clintons

Just 5.7 percent of the Clinton Foundation’s massive 2014 budget actually went to charitable grants, according to the tax-exempt organization’s IRS filings. The rest went to salaries and employee benefits, fundraising and “other expenses.”

The Clinton Foundation spent $91.3 million in 2014, the organization’s IRS filings show. But less than $5.2 million of that went to charitable grants.

That number pales in comparison to the $34.8 million the foundation spent on salaries, compensation and employee benefits. Another $50.4 million was marked as “other expenses,” while the remaining almost $851K was marked as “professional fundraising expenses.”

Despite taking in an additional $30 million in 2014, the Clinton Foundation spent 40 percent less on charitable grants in 2014 than in 2013. Even as it slashed charitable spending, the foundation increased the amount spent on salaries, employee benefits and compensation by $5 million in 2014. The foundation also spent $5 million more “other expenses” in 2014.

The Clinton Foundation’s largest charitable grant was a $2 million payment to the Alliance for a Healthier Generation (AHG), a joint project founded by the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart Association. Bruce Lindsey, the board chairman for the Clinton Foundation in 2014, also served on AHG’s board that year, according to the organization’s 2014 tax filings. Of the $16.3 million AHG organization spent in 2014, only $349,022, or 2.1 percent, was spent on charitable grants, the group’s tax filings show.

The Clinton Foundation’s largest single charitable grant to an organization not founded by the Clinton Foundation or managed by one of its board members was a $700,000 check to the J/P Haitian Relief Organization, a non-profit founded by actor Sean Penn. That organization reportedly spent more than $126,000 on first-class flights for the actor. Other charitable grants from the Clinton Foundation included $200,000 for the Tiger Woods Foundation.

The Clinton Global Initiative ($23.2 million) exists to organize and produce a lavish annual meeting headlined by former president Bill Clinton, was characterized by the New York Times as a “glitzy annual gathering of chief executives, heads of state, and celebrities,” hardly a portrait of the kind of charitable work that directly impacts the lives of the needy.

Ira Magaziner, a top former Clinton Foundation executive, also explicitly rejected that the group’s climate change activities were charitable in nature. “This is not charity,” Magaziner told The Atlantic in 2007. “The whole thing is bankable. It’s a commercial proposition.”

http://thefederalist.com/2016/09/16/clinton-foundation-spent-6-percent-charitable-grants-2014/