Bill Clinton Agrees to Limit Nonprofit Work

As news reports indicate that Hillary Rodham Clinton will become the secretary of state in the Obama administration, former president Bill Clinton has turned over the names of his charity’s donors to Barack Obama’s transition aides and has agreed to limit his charitable activities to avoid possible conflicts with his wife’s new government position.

While Mrs. Clinton, a Democratic senator from New York, has yet to be named as the country’s top diplomat, concerns have been raised about the contributors to Mr. Clinton’s philanthropy, especially foreign ones, and what access those people would have to Mrs. Clinton and other government officials in America and abroad.

According to a source familiar with the negotiations between the Clintons and representatives of Mr. Obama, Mr. Clinton has agreed to suspend his daily responsibilities at the William J. Clinton Foundation, in New York, and would require future contributors to his philanthropic efforts, which include the foundation and his presidential library in Little Rock, Ark., to be cleared by the White House general counsel and the State Department. The source confirmed news reports that the former president had turned over more than 200,000 names of donors who have given to his nonprofit groups, a move he has resisted in the past.

What’s more, Mr. Clinton is expected to divorce himself from the Clinton Global Initiative, an annual meeting of world leaders, wealthy philanthropists, and celebrities. It is unclear how the conference would continue without Mr. Clinton, who has been praised for using the event to bring together donors and charities to make big pledges to fight poverty and ameliorate other social ills. Since it started in 2005, Mr. Clinton says the meeting has generated $46-billion in charitable commitments.

Millions of Dollars Raised

For his own efforts, Mr. Clinton has garnered hundreds of millions of dollars for his foundation, which provides AIDS medicines, health-care services, and agriculture assistance in Africa and elsewhere. The Clinton Foundation is one of the most successful fund-raising organizations in the United States; it ranked No. 168 on The Chronicle’s most-recent list of the 400 charitable institutions that raise the most money.

While the negotiations between the incoming administration and the Mr. Clinton may continue, some nonprofit officials wonder if the changes would hamstring his role as a deal maker.

For example, it is widely seen that Mr. Clinton’s biggest accomplishment as a philanthropist has been to convince pharmaceutical companies to reduce the cost of AIDS and malaria medicines for impoverished regions of the world.

Jane Wales, president of the Global Philanthropy Forum who helped organize this year’s Clinton Global Initiative event in New York, said she hopes the potential restrictions would not prevent similar agreements with businesses, governments, and charities.

“Does this mean he would step away from that type of activity? If so, that would be too bad because he has a unique set of skills,” she said.

In addition, Ms. Wales, said that while Clinton donors should welcome a “high degree of transparency,” some may hold back from giving in the future.

“There is always the risk that philanthropists wishing to enjoy a high degree of privacy will be made uncomfortable,” Ms. Wales said. “You never know what the political requirements will be going forward, that always creates some degree of anxiety.”

Others have questioned whether Mr. Clinton’s decision to reveal the names of the benefactors violates his foundation’s privacy pledge to donors. Although, according to news reports, Mr. Clinton’s staff members are getting permission from contributors to go public.

Despite such concerns, other nonprofit officials say the possible change in Mr. Clinton’s nonprofit role has little downside.

“I don’t see it having a negative impact at all,” said Doug Ulman, president of the Lance Armstrong Foundation, in Austin, Tex., which has worked with Mr. Clinton on a worldwide effort to prevent cancer. “I don’t see our partnership or commitment changing in any way based on his wife’s role and his role.”

As for Mr. Clinton’s promise to disclose names of contributors to his charities, Mr. Ulman said: “Will it turn some people off to see who has contributed to the Clinton Foundation in the past? It could. But I think people who understand the challenges they’re trying to address will see the bigger picture.”

Identifying Donors

The issue of who has supported his presidential library has come up previously. During Mrs. Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, the former president declined to disclose the names of the library donors.

In an interview with The Chronicle in September, Mr. Clinton said he refused to name the benefactors because many gave on the condition that they remain anonymous and because no previous president had released the identities of library supporters.

“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,” he said.

Mr. Clinton also cautioned that if he did reveal the names, it could lead to questions about anonymous giving to other nonprofit institutions.

“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?” he said.

Despite this, he expressed a willingness to be more public about the benefactors if his wife’s political jobs required that step.

“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,” he said. “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.”

Beyond Disclosure

Some critics of Mr. Clinton, however, say he should go farther than just releasing the names of his donors.

Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative think tank in Washington, said that if Mrs. Clinton is tapped to lead the State Department, her husband would need to curtail his travel abroad as a philanthropist. His meetings with heads of state and dignitaries on such trips could hinder U.S. foreign policy, especially if Mr. Clinton brings contributors with him as he often does, Mr. Scanlon said.

“The potential for conflict is enormous,” he said.

But Steve Gunderson, president of the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers in Arlington, Va., said that a choice of Mrs. Clinton for a powerful administration position would benefit the nonprofit world.

“It means philanthropy will become more of a player,” he said.

Given her husband’s work, he said, the senator has a vast understanding of what foundations and wealthy humanitarians can do to help the world, knowledge she could use as secretary of state to forge greater collaboration between the U.S. government and nonprofit organizations. Said Mr. Gunderson: “I don’t see conflicts, I see partnerships.”