85. Where does President Barack Obama donate his money?

Welcome back to Spend Donate Invest! This is a podcast exploring the topic of whether we can reflect our activism, our beliefs, our societal values in what we’re doing with our money on a daily basis. I’m your host, I go by GG that is short for Genet Gimja and I’m happy to be here with you today!  

Today we are going to be talking about celebrity giving. Specifically, where does former President Barack Obama donate his money? It’s not the first time we’ve chatted about celeb giving, back on episode 72, I shared an episode called Where do Harry and Meghan donate, if you missed that one you can find it on the show’s website at spend donate invest dot world.

If you’re interested, there’s a website called Look to the Stars dot org and they compile lists of places where various celebrities have donated. Of course, it isn’t going to be comprehensive, I donate anonymously all the time and I’m not a wealthy celebrity, so I can only imagine that they are also giving donations that we will never know about. But for what is publicly available and compiled on this site, there’s quite a bit that we can observe.

And who knows, maybe you’ll find something in common with President Barack Obama, maybe you’ve donated at the same places before, or maybe you will be sparked to learn more about an organization that you might want to consider for your future giving.

Definitely there were some of the heavy hitters in there, the well known organizations, like

• American Civil Liberties Union
• Boys & Girls Clubs of America
• CARE
• Clinton Bush Haiti Fund
• GLSEN (gay lesbian and straight education network, anti bullying in schools)
• Harlem Children's Zone
• It Gets Better Project- only been around since 2010, feels like longer, they are bringing in about 3 or 4 million dollars a year, all about spreading this message to young queer people that it gets better
• NAACP
• National Domestic Violence Hotline
• National Network to End Domestic Violence
• National Park Foundation
• Save the Elephants
• The Trevor Project
• USAID- this is the govt agency that gives away foreign aid and development assistance to other countries. 

There were also some organizations that I had to learn more about:

• Avoided Deforestation Partners- this is a group that is fighting deforestation and I learned from researching their organization that 25% of the carbon in our atmosphere is removed by forests! I didn’t realize the number was quite that high!  A large part of their efforts go towards convening global leaders from government, civil society and the business world at the international United National Climate summits, the next meeting will be in Dubai at the end of 2023. Avoided Deforestaton Partners are also working with TV and movie projects to spread their message.
• Eracism Foundation- this is a foundation created by the actor Lou Gossett Jr, I wouldn’t even be able to get into his film credits it is very very long he’s in his late 80s and he’s been in everything! And his mission is to try to educate people on anti-racism.
• UMPS CARE- formed in 2006 by Major League Baseball (MLB) umpires to provide comfort, encouragement, and support to seriously ill children in hospitals and their families. Umpire crews visit hospitals and distribute gifts to children during the baseball season as well as the off-season, The charity's motto is "Helping People is an Easy Call". 
• United Service Organization- I thought I hadnt heard of this nonprofit before but I just had never heard it spelled out, this is USO for short and was founded in 1941 to provide live entertainment, such as comedians, actors and musicians, social facilities, and other programs to members of the United States Armed Forces and their families.
• Human Rights First- was originally called Lawyers Committee for International Human Rights, started in 1978 and they have a really nice timeline on their website with major legislation that they helped with, like in 1980 when they helped get American policies in line with the international law.
• K.I.D.S.- Kids In Distressed Situations, Inc. (KIDS) operates as a non-profit organization. The Organization distributes donated clothes, shoes, toys, books, and related goods to families. KIDS serves communities in the State of New York and operate out of the Empire State Bldg.
• Kids Wish Network- ok this was a juicy find on his list of charities and I was very surprised to see it on former President Obama’s list of places he’s donated because it very much as a very bad reputation as one of the worst charities in America. They apparently were found to only use 1% of the money they collected to the actual kids. They are set up to do the same thing as the Make a Wish Foundation, actually originally when Kids Wish Network started out they had a name that was so close to the Make a Wish Foundation that they got sued and changed it. Anyway lots of shady stuff in their dealings, very surprised if it is correct that former Pres Obama donated there!
• Neurofibromatosis, Inc.- so this is a network that is working to advocate to find a cure and treatment for one of the most common genetic disorders which causes tumors to grow on the nerves in the body. They were able to auction of a doodle that former Pres Obama drew while he was presiding over the Senate of Senators Charles E. Schumer, Harry Reid, Dianne Feinstein and Edward M. Kennedy. I’ll include the link to the doodle if you want to see it lol
• PeacePlayers International- uses the game of basketball with the premise that “children who play together can learn to live together.” They started overseas with programs in South Africa, Ireland, Middle East, I might be missing one, but then they also did a program in New Orleans when they did their first domestic program.
• Straight But Not Narrow- this is an organization that was started by another actor Avan Jogia from the Hunger Games and some of his friends. I saw that other celebs have also given to this nonprofit including Queen Latifah, Ellen Degenerous, Pink, and Jason Mraz.

Probably the most well known donation that former President Barack Obama made was when he donated all of the money he received with the Nobel Peace Prize, that was over a million dollars, $1.4M to be exact. And if you’re interested to see what other Nobel Prize winners have done with the money they won, I’ll include a link to that as well. Answers ranged from buying a sailboat to paying off mortgages to Al Gore who put it into a climate nonprofit that he was starting up.

According to the New York Times, Obama announced early that he would donate the full 10 million Swedish kronor (about US$1.4 million) monetary award to charity.[16] The largest donations were given to the housing charity Fisher House Foundation who received $250,000, and the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund which received $200,000. Eight organizations which support education also received a donation. $125,000 was donated to the College Summit, the Posse Foundation, the United Negro College Fund, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, and the American Indian College Fund. $100,000 was donated to Africare, and the Central Asia Institute.”

Ok so let’s stop there for today. That was a taste of what is publicly available about former President Obama’s donations. I read a moving story in Forbes, Joe Biden who I don’t think was even VP yet was talking about a time he was having his regular lunch with Obama who I don’t know if he was a Senator yet, I need to look at the timeline because it was around the time that Joe Biden’s son Beau had died and Joe Biden was talking about selling his house to support his son’s family and apparently Barack Obama stepped in and was like no don’t sell your house, I got you! I will leave a link to that story if you want to read more about it. It was very much giving Oprah and Gayle bff energy.

If you want to see an analysis of how much he made while he was in office (around $11M) and how much he gave away (almost exactly 10%) I will leave a link to a Forbes article about that. It also has some interesting tidbits about how his giving changed from when he was a Senator to when he was our President.

Links from today's episode

Obama’s Doodle for NF

https://images.app.goo.gl/Y52CobeDSe5CcVPo7

What do Nobel Prize Winners do with their Winnings?

https://content.time.com/time/specials/packages/article/0,28804,1848817_1848816_1848803,00.html 

Obama’s donation of his Nobel Prize Money

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/12/us/12nobel.html 

Obama’s donations in office

https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/2017/02/06/obama-donated-over-1-million-to-charity-as-president-heres-where-the-money-went/?sh=407c6b30459e