Building a Clinton Legacy

Presidential library takes shape through gifts large and small

When the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation offered donors of $35 or more the chance to have their

names inscribed on a steel support beam used in the construction of the presidential library complex here, more than 5,000 people made gifts.

Another appeal spurred donations of $100 or more apiece from some 8,000 people who will have their names — or the names of others they wish to honor — etched on bricks that will form the outward rim of the library’s main entrance in a “Celebration Circle” driveway.

And responses to fund-raising letters that included an offer of a presidential cookbook as a thank-you gift have been so voluminous that the cookbook has been picked up by an outside publisher and is now on sale in bookstores.

In its quest to raise the $165-million needed to complete the most expensive presidential library complex in history, the Clinton Presidential Foundation has aggressively sought and received small gifts — those of $100 or less. “We’ve been wonderfully fortunate in getting small dollar amounts,” Bill Clinton told The Chronicle in an interview. So far, about 100,000 such donations have been received.

Mr. Clinton says his organization, which is structured as a charity rather than a private foundation under federal law, has also attracted a substantial number of very big gifts, those of $150,000 or more. One reason: the fund-raising prowess of some of Mr. Clinton’s friends and colleagues, including Terry McAuliffe, a foundation board member and chairman of the Democratic National Committee who is well-known for his contacts and persuasiveness.

But with just seven months to go before opening day, this fund-raising campaign still has a fair amount of work ahead.

“We’ve still got a pretty good little bit to raise,” the former president says. He and his organization’s officials declined to specify just how much money remains to be drummed up.

$50-Million Raised

Federal informational tax returns filed by the William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation from 1998 through 2002 show that the charity had collected a total of about $50-million, a figure that the organization’s officials say does not include pledges, which they call “substantial.” Officials say the public will get its latest glimpse of the Clinton group’s fund-raising progress, through 2003, when the organization files its next tax return sometime on or before May 15.

“Every bit of the construction to this day has been paid for, without any debt,” says Skip Rutherford, president of Mr. Clinton’s foundation, of the fund-raising effort so far. Adds Mr. Rutherford, a Little Rock public-relations executive who has known Mr. Clinton for 30 years: “We’ve been very pleased with our support, but that’s not to say we don’t have a lot more to do.”

Mr. Clinton says his organization’s biggest challenge has been in attracting gifts of $5,000 to $150,000. “I’ve not done nearly as well in that whole range because, to get that sort of money, usually you have to do fund-raising events,” he says, such as holding breakfasts, dinners, and receptions. He says his schedule has made it hard for him to plan such events, particularly as the deadline nears for the release of his memoirs, which he hopes will be this summer.

Even so, the 42nd president says he is confident of making his library fund-raising goal. “By the time I get my book in and start my book tour and start traveling, I will be able to raise the rest,” Mr. Clinton says. He adds: “We’ll have to work, but I think we’ll do just fine.”

A Bridge to the Future

The William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park, now under construction in a former warehouse district in downtown Little Rock, is the 12th such facility built for a former chief executive of the United States. By comparison, the George Bush Presidential Library and Museum complex in Texas (built for the current president’s father) cost about half as much as the Clinton one is projected to cost, about $80-million.

The 150,000-square-foot Clinton library structure — designed to resemble a bridge, with significant amounts of glass — stretches toward the Arkansas River to remind people of Mr. Clinton’s vision of his administration as a “bridge to the 21st century.” It will house the largest-ever archive of presidential papers (documents, letters, e-mail messages, photographs, books, and other memorabilia) for use by scholars and journalists.

The library also will hold a 20,000-square-foot museum with exhibits about the Clinton administration, including his House impeachment and Senate acquittal, and the changes occurring in the United States at the end of the century. The exhibits will be designed by Ralph Appelbaum and Associates, which created the exhibits at the much-praised United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington. The library building, set in a new 30-acre city park, will also include a multipurpose “great hall” and space for the former president to live and work when he visits Little Rock.

With nine full-time staff members in Little Rock, most of whom are housed in trailers near the library construction site, the Clinton Presidential Foundation is using numerous methods — including mail and e-mail appeals — to seek the funds needed to cover the cost of constructing the center by the time the library doors officially open on November 18.

Once the $165-million mark is met, the foundation plans to raise an additional $40-million for an endowment to help cover the costs of running the museum and center. The endowment also will be used for the foundation’s other endeavors, such as Mr. Clinton’s work to combat HIV/AIDS and to promote volunteer service (The Chronicle, October 17, 2002).

Not everyone is pleased with the scope and scale of the Clinton library. Terrence Scanlon, president of the Capital Research Center, a conservative Washington think tank that monitors nonprofit groups, says the $165-million price tag of the Clinton library complex is “exorbitant.” The funds would be better spent on fighting “world hunger” or some other problem, says Mr. Scanlon. “Even with inflation,” he says, “this is a gross amount of money.”

Friends and Supporters

Mr. Rutherford, who heads Mr. Clinton’s charity, says that the organization has followed in the footsteps of fund-raising efforts by previous presidential libraries. Donors have included friends and supporters of the former president; individuals, corporations, and foundations that give money to many presidential libraries; donors from the local region who want to help; and foreign governments and people from other countries.

But small gifts are playing a key role in this presidential-library drive. “Small donors are critical for us because there are a lot of people who believed in Bill Clinton who don’t have a lot of money,” says Mr. Rutherford. “And $50 is a lot of money for many people, including those on fixed incomes, to give.”

To date, most of the small contributions received by the Clinton foundation have come in response to mail appeals that were crafted by Mr. Rutherford and a fund-raising consulting company, O’Brien McConnell & Pearson, in Washington, which worked for Hillary Rodham Clinton in her successful campaign for the Senate in 2000.

Among those who have signed fund-raising letters, which often include cards that show the architect’s renderings of the center, are Mr. Clinton; Mr. Rutherford; the Clinton political adviser James Carville; and Madeleine Albright, the former secretary of state.

Clinton foundation officials say fund-raising letters that offer premiums — such as holiday ornaments or the chance to purchase trees for the center’s park or membership cards to the library — have produced a strong response. “To get a keepsake, to have your name on a beam, to purchase a tree, all give people a personal attachment, and people want to be a part of it,” says Mr. Rutherford.

In a light-hearted mailing, Mr. Rutherford asked for donations with a promise to send, in appreciation, The Clinton Presidential Center Cookbook, a collection of 250 recipes submitted or enjoyed by, among others, New York Sen. Rodham Clinton (chocolate-chip cookies), Barbra Streisand (southern lemon icebox pie), and Elvis Presley (grilled peanut butter and banana sandwich).

Conceived as a gift for donors of $35 or more with a first printing of 15,000 copies, the book has been picked up by Meredith Books and is now sold in retail stores, with royalties sent to the Clinton presidential fund.

In March, a fund-raising appeal aimed at small donors asked recipients to submit their thoughts on an enclosed card to be placed in a time capsule at the library, along with Mr. Clinton’s own writings about his vision for the future.

Most of the items offered through direct-mail appeals are also made available to potential donors through e-mail, Clinton officials say.

“Over the past several months, we have seen a significant increase in Internet sales, and we expect that to continue,” foundation officials said in a statement.

‘How Deep Is Your Support?’

The stream of small gifts that have been received has helped Clinton fund raisers persuade potential donors of large gifts — such as corporations and foundations — to jump in.

“When those big donors say, ‘How deep is your support?’ it helps to be able to say that we got 100,000 small donors from every state in the union and from many countries,” says Mr. Rutherford. “They say back, ‘Wow, pretty good for a nonprofit, and it isn’t even built yet.’”

Among contributors to the Clinton Presidential Center whose donations have been made public: the Alltel communications corporation, based in Little Rock, has given about $1-million; the Bank of America Foundation, in Charlotte, N.C., $500,000; and a Dallas trust created by Roy and Christine Sturgis, about $4-million.

The presidential-library donor who made the most news didn’t make the largest gift.

Just before leaving office in January 2001, Mr. Clinton granted a pardon to Marc Rich, a fugitive financier. Mr. Rich’s ex-wife, Denise Rich, had earlier contributed $450,000 to the Clinton library fund. Mr. Clinton denied any connection between the gift and pardon.

Mr. Rutherford says that at the time of the controversy, he was bombarded with calls from the news media.

“As I look back on it, our donors stayed with us during that time,” Mr. Rutherford recalls. “Probably a postscript now is that all those times I had to deal with it, I was playing defense when I could have been playing offense, and raised more money.”

Spurring Tourism

Mr. Clinton believes the library complex, designed to improve the ecology of the area, which is bordered by a major interstate highway, will serve as a magnet for 300,000 visitors annually. He hopes tourists will linger in Little Rock — the Arkansas capital where the former president lived for 16 years and served as governor for 12 — and in surrounding areas.

Adjacent to the library, a century-old railroad bridge that crosses the Arkansas River will be restored and converted for pedestrian use. Just west of the main building, in an 1899 passenger train depot that is being restored, will be the University of Arkansas Clinton School of Public Service, which will offer master’s degrees beginning in the fall of 2005 and feature guest lecturers, such as Mr. Clinton and scholars and journalists doing research.

Mr. Clinton wants his presidential center complex to help fuel an economic-development boom in downtown Little Rock’s once-decrepit River Market District, where new office buildings, condominiums, a city parking deck, restaurants, shops, and other businesses have sprouted, and in nearby areas that feature hotels recently refurbished in anticipation of the library’s opening.

The promise of the Clinton library helped prompt Heifer Project International — a Little Rock charity that fights hunger and poverty in developing countries — to decide to build a $16.3-million, 94,000-square-foot world headquarters next door to the Clinton center on brownfield land that had contained a railroad switching yard with abandoned warehouses. The facility is still under construction, and Heifer will later add an educational center called a Global Village that it expects will attract many of the visitors to the Clinton library, as well as others.

“Research shows that people come out of presidential libraries and say, ‘OK, now what do we do?’” says Jo Luck, chief executive officer of Heifer Project International. “We’re going to offer them villages and huts and music and sounds and sights. Everyone will want to see what all that is — and then we can talk to them about the root causes of hunger in the world.”

In addition, the Clinton charity hopes to encourage companies and charities to select nearby Little Rock convention halls for meetings, and lure out-of-towners to other local points of interest, including Central High School, which black students in 1957 attempted to enter in one of the nation’s high-profile civil-rights integration struggles.

Looking Ahead

Even as the countdown continues to the library’s completion, Mr. Rutherford says Clinton Presidential Foundation officials are keeping an eye on the long term.

To that end, the organization will hold conferences and other special events, and step up its appeals for planned gifts, such as bequests and charitable remainder trusts.

Small donations will also continue to play a crucial role in the center’s fund-raising efforts. “My goal,” says Mr. Clinton, “is to work our Internet operations so that after we get the center open and the whole thing’s up on the Web — an online tour through the library and foundation and through the major issues of the day based on what I’ve been saying about them and what I think — I hope we’ll be able to finance the whole thing from then on with small contributions.”

In addition, the presidential foundation has set up a private Web site, http://www.clintonstaff.com, so the people who served in the Clinton administration can communicate with the charity and one another.

The site will serve as a “research tool,” says Mr. Rutherford, allowing scholars and journalists to reach former officials in coming years by going through the Clinton organization.

At the same time, the presidential foundation can use the site as a way to keep former staff members aware of the need for financial assistance in the future.

“So many of the people in the Clinton administration were very young,” Mr. Rutherford says. “As these people grow in their careers and many become CEO’s and COO’s and CFO’s, there’s going to be this great loyalty and affection for the guy who gave them their start, and they’ll want to help.”

How successful Mr. Clinton’s presidential center turns out to be will ultimately depend on the final product, says Allan J. Lichtman, a professor of history at American University, in Washington.

“If this is a facility that’s just a lot of show, then it won’t be helpful either to the Clinton legacy or to Little Rock,” says Mr. Lichtman. But, he says, “If it really opens a window on the Clinton administration and America in the 1990s, people will flock to it.”

THE WILLIAM J. CLINTON PRESIDENTIAL FOUNDATION

Purpose: The William J. Clinton Presidential Foundation was created to design, construct, and endow a depository for the former president’s White House documents, letters, e-mails, photographs, books, and other memorabilia. The organization also supports Mr. Clinton’s efforts to strengthen the ability of people at home and abroad to meet the challenges of global interdependence — working principally through partnerships with individuals, nongovernmental organizations, corporations, and governments — and often serves as “an incubator for new policies and programs.” The Clinton charity works to fight HIV/AIDS and to promote racial, ethnic, and religious reconciliation; citizen service; the economic empowerment of poor people; and leadership development.

Finances: The organization is working to raise $165-million by November 2004 to construct the William J. Clinton Presidential Center and Park in Little Rock, Ark. It plans to raise an additional $40-million in the coming months and years to build an endowment. The charity has reported collecting about $50-million from 1998 through 2002, not including pledges.

Key officials: Skip Rutherford, president; Maggie Williams, chief of staff, Office of William J. Clinton

Address: P.O. Box 1104, Little Rock, Ark. 72203; (501) 370-8000; or 55 West 125th Street, New York, N.Y. 10027; (212) 348-8882

Web site: http://www.clintonpresidentialcenter.org