Campaigning for Charity: an Interview With Bill Clinton

In the almost eight years since he left the White House, the former president Bill Clinton has become a major force in the nonprofit world — and his philanthropic ambitions continue to grow.

The William J. Clinton Foundation, in New York, has expanded from a single office in Harlem into a global organization, raising $131-million last year to build health clinics in Africa, fight disease in Asia, and curb childhood obesity in the United States. The ex-president’s annual philanthropy event, the Clinton Global Initiative, which will be held next week, has helped spur thousands of charitable pledges from corporations and wealthy individuals.

Perhaps most notable, Mr. Clinton has negotiated deals with several pharmaceutical companies to lower the costs of HIV/AIDS and malaria drugs, which he says has helped save the lives of millions of people.

But as with his political career, Mr. Clinton’s nonprofit efforts occasionally court controversy. Some critics doubt the effectiveness of the Clinton Global Initiative.

And during the presidential campaign of his wife, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, a New York Democrat, the couple faced questions about whether donors to Mr. Clinton’s presidential library and other nonprofit activities would have political influence in a second Clinton White House.

Mr. Clinton says the contributors have a legal right to make anonymous gifts and that he vets all of them before accepting any money. “To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t take money from anybody I shouldn’t have,” he told The Chronicle in an interview at his house here on a recent afternoon.

In a den filled with Native American art, Mr. Clinton discussed the library debate, why he enjoys philanthropy more than politics, and what both presidential candidates — Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain — can do to support nonprofit groups.

The following are excerpts from The Chronicle’s conversation with Mr. Clinton. Audio excerpts from the interview are available at http://philanthropy.com/extras.

What can the next president do to promote philanthropy and volunteerism?

Expanding AmeriCorps is a good place to start. Senator Obama had a line in his speech [during the Democratic National Convention] where he said he thought that everybody ought to get help to go to college if they agree to serve in their communities for a year. And that’s how AmeriCorps works. And I know that Senator McCain has supported it. So I think we’ve now got a bipartisan consensus on AmeriCorps or national service.

What are the biggest challenges to you as a philanthropist?

The first is, because I’m not personally super wealthy — I mean, I have a good deal of money and I try to give the appropriate amount away each year, but it’s nowhere near enough to cover all the stuff I do — I have to raise the money for everything I do.

There’s an infinite amount of things to be done, everybody has good intentions, they think we’re good at turning good intentions into concrete changes, so there’s always a greater demand for what we can do than we can fund. And it’s important for us to raise as much money as we can, but also to have the judgment not to outrun our supply lines.

Second big challenge is deciding what to say “no” to. Because there’s just almost an unlimited number of things to do.

Third big challenge for us, mostly in our American operations, is how to get to scale in a sustainable way.

The biggest thing we’re doing in the country is trying to reverse the tide of childhood obesity. This year we’ve got a particular challenge: The rising cost of fuel and declining incomes have created enormous stresses on school budgets. I’m very much afraid that a lot of the gains we have made in the cafeterias, with more fresh vegetables and fruits being offered, might be sacrificed just for the economic emergency a lot of school districts are facing.

Is there a global problem you wish you could do more about?

A number of them. I wish that we could do more to get all the kids of the world in school and to give them trained teachers and adequate materials. I wish I could do something to impact the number of young people who are subject to trafficking of various kinds, everything from slavery to the quasi-bondage system we’ve got still in Haiti. On the economic side, I wish I could do more for the Native American communities in this country.

What is your opinion of Bill and Melinda Gates?

I have an enormous regard for the work they’ve done. Not only because they put so much money in it, but they are really serious about the way they spend their money. When they take a risk, like microbicide gels [used to prevent the transmission of HIV], the [AIDS]-vaccine investments, they know it’s a risk, they know they could lose the money, but somebody’s got to push the ball forward.

During your wife’s presidential campaign, questions were raised about who had donated to your presidential library. Are you asking donors if you can reveal their identities at some point in the future?

I haven’t thought much about it. The only reason I didn’t want to do the library donors is that no previous president had. I suppose if Hillary were elected president, or maybe even if she had been nominated, we would have had to go back to the donors and at least disclose everyone that didn’t object to it. But I wouldn’t have any objection to it.

With foreign donors, but also with domestic ones, if there’s any question, we do exhaustive vetting. I can recall some money we haven’t taken and also some we did but only after more than a year of efforts to make sure that everything was okay.

Do you think presidential libraries should be required to disclose the names of their donors?

They probably will be, regardless. But the American people have to understand that, unless you don’t want any of these presidential libraries, there are very few presidents who can afford to build one on their own. So you’ve got to raise the money.

In other charitable contexts, people have a choice about whether to keep their donations private or not. A lot of people give anonymous gifts to universities. And you can raise the same kind of questions there: Did this [gift] compromise the university’s admissions policy? Did this compromise the university’s research policies?

I’m basically pro-disclosure. My reluctance in the library case is not that I was ashamed of anyone who gave me money. It was because when the people gave me money, they had a reasonable expectation that their gifts would remain anonymous.

To the best of my knowledge, I didn’t take money from anybody I shouldn’t have.

How many lives do you think you’ve helped as a philanthropist?

We know from keeping up with what happened with CGI [Clinton Global Initiative] for the first three years how many people have been positively affected. I would say that we’re well over 100 million people whose lives have been advanced somehow or another by CGI, and a smaller but significant number in the millions by the direct operations of the foundation.

But given the complexity of the issues, can any one organization take credit for assisting that many lives?

Not alone, but you can say you were a part of it. For example, the thing we did with the AIDS drugs — which I think is the most important — has enabled large numbers of people to get medicine much quicker than they otherwise could have because of the limited amount of money available.

I give the primary credit to the governments in question for making this a priority, because we don’t go any place we’re not asked to go.

So I would not say we are solely responsible, but if we hadn’t done this, some significant number of people would not be alive today.

Which do you enjoy more, raising money for political campaigns or for charity?

Oh, this much more. I love politics and I love public policy, but I like this a lot better. I like raising [money] in large amounts and having large numbers of people give small amounts. I like the latter because it should be a part of citizenship, and I like the former because I think there’s too much inequality in the world and in America.

Do you feel you can do more good as a philanthropist than as president?

I have a lot of flexibility and in some ways it’s more hands-on than being president. When you’re president, your life is a constant struggle between doing what you ran for office to do and what the demands of the moment are. People ask me all the time, Do you think you’ll do more good as a private citizen than you did as president? I always say, If I do, I’ll have to live a long, long, long time. But [philanthropy] is more personal, more immediate, and more intense. I can feel and see the people who are helped in a way you couldn’t as president.