For those who support Hillary Clinton against her attackers in the media, and against the endless churn of material the media pick up from the right-wing propaganda machine, a common defense is that whatever was done by her and Bill's (and now Chelsea's) Clinton Foundation was done in the name of charity. Sure a few i's might have not been dotted or t's crossed along the way, but, hey, they're doing good works, so cut them some slack, all right?
I have to say, outrage over whether all their tax returns were properly filed or whether Trey Gowdy gets hold of Hillary Clinton's missing emails (Benghazi!) and uses them to fling the usual right-wing pooh interests me very little.
But what has piqued my interest is the question of what the Clinton Foundation/Clinton Global Initiative actually does. In the spirit of Meteor Blades motto ("Don't tell me what you believe, show me what you do and I will tell you what you believe") I went to have a look.
The first striking thing about it is the question of what kind of charity is it, or whether it is even a charity at all.
What is charity, or a charity, by definition?
- generous actions or donations to aid the poor, ill, or helpless
- something given to a person or persons in need; alms
- the voluntary giving of help, typically in the form of money, to those in need
- an institution engaged in relief of the poor
The stated mission of the Clinton Foundation is:
We convene businesses, governments, NGOs, and individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity for women and girls, reduce childhood obesity, create economic opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of climate change.
There is certainly something charity-ish in that, but it's not quite like what you usually think of when the word charity is used.
One of the first things to consider when judging the worthiness of a charity as a charity is to look at what percentage of their funding goes to support their stated mission.
Typical well-run charities spend no more than one-third of their total budget on overhead. The American Red Cross spends 92.1% of its income on actual charitable programs; World Vision spends 85%; Doctors Without Borders spends 86-89%; and so on.
From the Clinton Foundation's Wikipedia page:
Between 2009 and 2012, the The Federalist reported that the Clinton Foundation raised more than $500 million dollars according to its IRS filings. 15% of that, or $75 million, was spent on charitable activities. More than $25 million was spent on travel expenses. Nearly $110 million went toward employee salaries and benefits.
(
Note: This may not actually be as bad as it sounds; it seems that for 2014, for example, 76% of their expenditures were for programs, and their program expenses were $68 million of $85 million total expenses; their charitable work is done through those programs, not through funds given out as charity as The Federalist would have you believe. If you know more about how this works, and why the 15% figure cited shouldn't be considered correct, weigh in in the comments.)
Charity Navigator is a nonprofit that evaluates charities by looking at what percentage of the funds they collect actually goes for their stated mission, versus how much is eaten up by administrative or other costs. It helps givers see whether a charity is meeting its goals and is efficiently run or not. About the Clinton Foundation they have this to say - at one time they evaluated the organization, but they no longer do so, and have them on their watchlist:
Why isn't this organization rated?
We had previously evaluated this organization, but have since determined that this charity's atypical business model can not be accurately captured in our current rating methodology. Our removal of The Clinton Foundation from our site is neither a condemnation nor an endorsement of this charity. We reserve the right to reinstate a rating for The Clinton Foundation as soon as we identify a rating methodology that appropriately captures its business model.
What does it mean that this organization isn’t rated?
It simply means that the organization doesn't meet our criteria. A lack of a rating does not indicate a positive or negative assessment by Charity Navigator.
And if you go browse through the projects the Clinton Foundation is involved in, it immediately becomes clear that there are so many of them, presented with such chirpy but relatively uninformative reports on their activities, that it would take a platoon of researchers quite a bit of time to get a detailed understanding of the pros and cons of any of them, and what the bottom line is of what has actually been accomplished by them, and at what cost.
I'm just an interested citizen with no such resources, so I picked a few of their posted projects at random and just googled a bit to see what I could find out about them from other sources.
The first one I looked at was Bridging the Communications Gap in the Lake Tanganyika Basin, the first listed on their Commitments page.
Democratic Republic of the Congo, Tanzania
Launched 2012
Est. Duration 4 year
Estimated Total Value $725,000
Commitment by: Wave (Water Based Aid, Value And Engagement)
Partner(s): Hewlett-Packard Company, Team Rubicon, The Nature Conservancy, Drc Ministry Of Health, Tanzania Ministry of Health, WE CARE Solar, iilab, Beach Energy Limited
The actual group on the ground carrying out the project seems to come down to this one rather heroic woman, Amy Lehman, a former Chicago surgeon, who
runs a floating hospital (LTFHC) in the Congo, using Lake Tanganyika to reach some of the most remote communities in the world, bringing thousands of mosquito nets to combat malaria and much-needed health care to the people.
The Clinton Foundation involvement has been to bring together corporate entities to help the Floating Hospital set up a rudimentary communications system between itself, the remote clinics it has set up at, initially, eight of the far-flung villages it serves, and the regional hospital, using HF radios, antennas and solar power systems.
The on-the-ground work was carried out by local people themselves, and training was provided to help them set up, use, and maintain the system.
All this sounds like it may benefit the people of the region, though a few things stuck out about it for me.
First of all, with the actual setting up of the system being done by local people and the charitable floating hospital, and (presumably) materials and expertise being supplied by the corporate partners, what did the Clinton Foundation actually do with its $725,000 seed money? What has been accomplished thus far is the placement of eight HF radios around Lake Tanganyika that weren't there before, antennas to connect them, placing several laptops for data collection at lakeside clinics, and the training of 12 health care workers in basic computer skills. The initial test phase is complete, and by 2016 the further project commitments are:
LTFHC will install 61 High Frequency Long Wave Radios at health centers, 25 boxes with data transfer technology, and 25 laptop computers in order to overcome the current communications gap in the Lake Tanganyika basin.
I have no idea whether under the circumstances that is good value for money. It seems some good was done, and more will be, though it's unclear to me how sustainable it might be. How long is a laptop likely to function under Congo climate conditions. How useful or transferable is the training on the technology that was given to the locals?
Secondly, a big part of the project is to collect electronic health records and provide the means to submit them to the various government health ministries. Lake Tanganyika sits at the nexus of four countries, the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Tanzania (TZ), Burundi, and Zambia. Collecting public health and epidemiologic data from this remote region will help them carry out monitoring of communicable diseases that can easily turn into epidemics across international borders.
Isn't this the sort of thing that governments used to do? Fund and bring together expertise and resources to monitor and maintain global public health? As trade agreements like the TPP further hollow out democracy and turn public policy over to global corporations, I suppose things like the Clinton Foundation are a natural counterpoint. Whether Democrats or Republicans are in power becomes increasingly irrelevant. Privatized public policy institutions like the Clinton Foundation will trundle on, regardless, with the missions they set for themselves, and the corporations they are able to entice into assisting, whether for their own advancement of research, or connections, or simply for good PR.
Another project I looked at was this: Owner-Tenant Collaboration for Building Efficiency:
Launched: 2011
Est. Duration: 4 year
Estimated Total Value: $93,360
Region: Northern America
Countries: United States
This project was aimed at persuading major property owners and tenants to incorporate energy efficiency into the commercial office leasing process and to "retrofit, build-out, operate, and maintain their respective buildings and leased premises" using best practices for energy efficiency.
The first building, used as a test case, was the Empire State Building. By all accounts, it was a smashing success. It more than met its energy saving goals, and provided an instructive model for rolling out such energy efficiency improvements on a widespread basis. It showed that incorporating such improvements into major renovations was economically worthwhile for the corporations involved, as it reduced their maintenance costs and increased the value of their properties.
Again, a few thoughts. It seems like a worthwhile project, but the entirely corporate-focused nature of it doesn't sit comfortably for me within the concept of a charity. It's accomplishing a public good, but entirely through corporate means, and at the same time to the advantage of those corporations. And how agreeable to participating in and funding these kinds of projects would large corporations be without the political component, the fact that a former president and a potential future one are the people twisting their arms to get on board, with all the opportunities for insider influence and cronyism that implies?
It's easy to see why the Charity Navigator threw up its hands and said we don't know how to judge what the Clinton Foundation does as a charity because it doesn't fit into any model of a charity that we're used to evaluating.
We're clearly moving into new post-democratic global territory here. I use the term New World Order in the title not in its conspiracy theory sense but in its political sense, as:
...any new period of history evidencing a dramatic change in world political thought and the balance of power. Despite various interpretations of this term, it is primarily associated with the ideological notion of global governance only in the sense of new collective efforts to identify, understand, or address worldwide problems that go beyond the capacity of individual nation-states to solve.
I encourage you to go explore the work of the
Clinton Foundation for yourselves, to see some of what our new overlords have in store for us as they reshape the world according to their own vision and values. Not that it will make the least iota of difference what you think about it, good or bad.