Obama Foundation fundraising down in 2018, pay for top staffers went up

WASHINGTON — New financial documents released Friday reveal a sharp decrease in fundraising for the Obama Foundation in 2018 — and significant boosts in the salary packages of top staffers.

In 2018, contributions and in-kind gifts to the Chicago foundation totaled $164.8 million, according to the new annual report — a drop of $67.8 million from the record $232.6 million in 2017.

The 2017 rise was attributable to several factors: With former President Barack Obama freshly out of office, he was free to solicit jumbo contributions and harvest pent-up demand. And he lifted the $1 million cap that was in place while he was in the White House.

Last year, Obama, working on his presidential memoir, cut back the time he devoted to wooing contributors.

The financial information came in the annual report and the public posting of the foundation’s Internal Revenue Service Form 990, which provides more detail. The IRS 990 must be filed annually by tax-exempt organizations and requires them to list information about their highest-paid employees and contractors.

The Obama Foundation uses the money to pay operating expenses for staffers and consultants and for a growing number of domestic and international programs. Money also is being stockpiled to pay the estimated $500 million for the construction of the Obama Presidential Center proposed for Jackson Park.

While a federal judge earlier this month tossed out a lawsuit that aimed to block development of the center in the historic South Side park, groundbreaking cannot take place until a federal review of the project is complete. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has not signaled yet how she wants the federal review to proceed or how she will wrangle a community-benefits agreement that the foundation and Obama oppose.

TOP STAFF PAY ROSE

The base salary plus benefits packages for top foundation executives in 2018 were:

• David Simas, chief executive officer — $641,846 in 2018, up from $614,636 the previous year.
• Robbin Cohen, executive director — $589,971, up from $562,055. Cohen’s total pay package in 2017 was $862,055, including a onetime $300,000 bonus; she was not paid by the foundation in 2014, its first year.
• Glenn Brown, chief digital officer — $445,807, up from $378,519.
• Anne Filipic, chief program officer — $413,711 in her first full year.
• Michael Strautmanis, civic engagement vice president — $305,785, up from $292,044.
• Bernadette Meehan, chief international officer — $293,637, up from $180,048.

• Roark Frankel, planning and construction director — $260,121, up from $253,430.

Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng got $56,000 in 2018 for work as a consultant for the foundation’s Asia-Pacific conference in Hawaii, where she lives. Until mid-2018, she was a member of the board; after she resigned she was hired as a consultant.

Architects Billie Tsien and Tod Williams, who are designing the Obama Center, were compensated $7,581,642 in 2018; they collected $4,963,525 in 2017. They were hired in June 2016 and paid $305,622 that year.

The Obama Foundation was created on Jan. 31, 2014. In its first three 990s, the names of major donors, their states of residence and the exact amounts of the gifts were listed.

Last year, the foundation stopped listing the names of donors in the IRS filing. So it is impossible to know the sources of the jumbo contributions. The foundation’s website lists names of donors without specifics. The annual report says 84.4 percent of the 2018 giving came from individuals and 15.6 percent from corporate or other foundation sources.

In 2018, the Obama Foundation was not able to land as many supersized contributions, compared to 2017. For example, in 2018, the foundation landed two donations of $25 million each; in 2017, it had six gifts over $24 million.

The foundation last year stepped up domestic grant-making, handing out $2.8 million to organizations in the mainland U.S. and Puerto Rico and $700,000 to groups in Chicago, with the largest gift, $500,000, going to Youth Guidance, a nonprofit in the Loop that’s overseeing the expansion — with the assist of former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Obama’s first chief of staff — of the Becoming A Man program, which blossomed under Emanuel and Obama.