Clinton Becomes 'Leading Brand' in Giving Industry
Clinton Becomes 'Leading Brand' in Giving Industry
Since leaving the White House, former president Bill Clinton has transformed himself into a major player in the business of giving away money — a remarkable piece of rebranding for a man never blessed with spare cash to give, the Economist reports.
The beginning of September marked the publication of Clinton's latest book, Giving: How Each of Us Can Change the World, and this week the man once nicknamed the "Comeback Kid" will take center stage at the Clinton Global Initiative in New York City. It's an amazing feat for someone who did not come from wealth. "I entered the White House with the lowest net worth of any president in the twentieth century," Clinton has said, "and I left it $10 million to $12 million in debt." His genius lies not in giving away his own money, but in getting other people to attach his name to their money to increase its impact.
The Clinton brand has benefited considerably by its institutionalization in the Clinton Foundation. Despite its name and plans to raise an endowment, the foundation is really a nongovernmental organization rather than a grantmaking entity, and has taken to a new level the post-presidential activism pioneered by former president Jimmy Carter. The foundation was established in 1997 to oversee the building of the Clinton Presidential Library, and is now a global organization that runs programs to combat HIV/AIDS, poverty, and climate change.
The Clinton brand of philanthropy is characterized by a businesslike approach to public-benefit markets and places a premium on the value and benefits of partnership. To date, the foundation's greatest success has been securing reductions in the price of anti-retroviral drugs for AIDS victims in poor countries by negotiating bulk-purchase agreements with generic drugmakers and supplying the drugs jointly with the London-based Children's Investment Fund Foundation, a nonprofit philanthropic organization started by hedge fund manager Chris Cooper-Hohn. Building on that success, the Clinton-Hunter Development Initiative, which aims to promote sustainable growth in Africa, launched in 2006 with $100 million from British billionaire Sir Tom Hunter, and earlier this year the foundation launched the Clinton Giustra Sustainable Growth Initiative — established with $100 million from mining mogul Frank Giustra and matching sums from Lukas Lundin, a Swedish businessman based in Canada, and Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim.
In fact, 65 percent of the thousand participants or so at this week's Clinton Global Initiative work in the private sector, and, like all CGI participants, they will be expected to pledge a "good work" that benefits humanity and then make good on that pledge in the next twelve months. According to the Clinton Foundation, nearly six hundred pledges worth almost $10 billion have already been made. Critics complain that many of these good works actually boost the profits of the companies concerned. But while Clinton concedes that the practice raises questions, he says he has no problem with a company making a for-profit pledge if it has the potential to generate significant public good. Calling these new philanthropists "bleeding-heart cheapskates," he says they are "not naive. They don't want to waste a lot of money, they like low administrative overhead, they measure pretty ruthlessly for return."
“The Brand of Clinton.”
The Economist
9/20/07.
Primary Subject: Philanthropy and Voluntarism
Secondary Subject(s): International Affairs/Development, Environment, Health
Location(s): Africa, Canada, International, Mexico, New York, New York City
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