Dear Friend,
When
I left the White House in 2001 and returned to life as a private
citizen, I wanted to continue working in areas I had long cared about,
where I believed I could still make an impact. That’s what the Clinton
Foundation has tried to do, by creating opportunities and solving
problems faster, better, at lower cost so that more people are empowered
to build better futures for themselves, their families, and their
communities. I am grateful to everyone in the U.S. and across the world
who has been involved in our work, and especially grateful to Chelsea
for her role in increasing scope and impact.
From day one, the
Foundation has pursued its mission through partnerships with
governments, the private sector, other foundations, and philanthropists,
creating networks of cooperation that are focused on results. In 2005,
we convened the Clinton Global Initiative (CGI) to give people all over
the world the chance to do the same thing.
These efforts have improved millions of lives around the world. For example:
- More
than 11.5 million people in over 70 countries have access to lifesaving
HIV/AIDS drugs at 90 percent lower cost through our affiliated Clinton
Health Access Initiative (CHAI), including more than 800,000 children.
That’s more than half the adults and three quarters of the children on
treatment today.
- CHAI has also organized the training of
thousands of health care workers as part of an effort to address
critical shortages in poor countries and help others build strong,
self-sufficient health systems, and expanded access to high-quality,
low-cost treatment and diagnostics for many other diseases and
conditions.
- Through our work with the affiliated Alliance for a
Healthier Generation, more than 18 million students in over 31,000
American schools, in every state, now have healthier food and more
physical activity options, and our agreements with the beverage industry
have reduced the caloric intake from drinks by 90 percent in the vast
majority of U.S. schools.
- Our Health Matters Initiative is
working in six communities to improve health and has worked with
innovative drug companies to help reverse opioid overdoses and combat
prescription painkiller misuse by lowering the cost of autoinjection
naloxone and making naloxone nasal spray available to every high school
in the U.S. at no cost.
- The Foundation’s Haiti initiative has
promoted sustainable investment resulting in the planting of more than 5
million trees, the development of 5 new agricultural supply chains
benefiting more than 4,000 smallholder farmers, and support for more
than 20 entrepreneurial businesses. And members of CGI’s Haiti Action
Network have made more than 100 Commitments to Action to strengthen the
health, education, agriculture, and infrastructure sectors.
- Our
climate change projects have reduced greenhouse gas emissions by more
than 33,500 tons annually across the U.S. We’ve also partnered on
reforestation and land restoration efforts in South America and East
Africa, and are working with island nations to develop renewable energy
projects and reduce dependence on expensive imported diesel and
petroleum.
- More than 500,000 people in Latin America are
benefiting from social enterprises that connect people to job training,
supply chains, and entrepreneurship opportunities.
- More than 105,000 farmers in East Africa have dramatically increased their yields and their incomes.
- And,
through Too Small to Fail (TSTF), we are working with the faith-based
community, pediatricians, community and business leaders, and Head Start
educators to provide parents with resources in everyday settings to
support their young children’s early brain and language development, and
have reached 155,000 parents with tips through direct text messages.
I
have found great joy in simple moments shared with people who are
benefiting from our work: holding a baby who is alive and healthy
because he now has access to AIDS medication; planting rows of seeds
with smallholder farmers in Malawi and hearing about how our programs
have lifted their incomes, enabling them to send their children to
school and electrify their homes; meeting with female entrepreneurs in
Peru who are earning a good living for the first time in their lives by
providing essential goods to their remote communities. This work has
been my life for the last 15 years, and I couldn’t be more grateful.
Since
Hillary began her presidential campaign in 2015, Chelsea and I have
made it clear that the work the Clinton Foundation started should
continue if Hillary is elected, but that changes would be necessary.
While it would be presumptive to assume a victory in November, now that
Hillary is her party’s nominee, it would be irresponsible not to plan
for it.
If Hillary is elected president, the Foundation’s work,
funding, global reach, and my role in it will present questions that
must be resolved in a way that keeps the good work going while
eliminating legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest.
Over the last several months, members of the Foundation’s senior
leadership, Chelsea, and I have evaluated how the Foundation should
operate if Hillary is elected. Throughout the process, our top
priorities have been preserving our most important programs, supporting
the people who work for the Foundation and its affiliated programs, and
resolving legitimate conflict of interest questions.
If she is
elected, we will immediately implement the following changes: The
Foundation will accept contributions only from U.S. citizens, permanent
residents, and U.S.-based independent foundations, whose names we will
continue to make public on a quarterly basis. And we will change the
official name from the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation to
the Clinton Foundation.
While I will continue to support the work
of the Foundation, I will step down from the Board and will no longer
raise funds for it.
Much of the Foundation’s international work,
like that of most global NGOs, is funded in part by donor governments’
bilateral aid programs. If Hillary is elected, we will transition those
programs out of the Foundation to other organizations committed to
continuing their work. Doing this in a way that ensures continuity and
is respectful of all the employees working around the world will take
time. We will complete these transitions as soon as we can do so
responsibly.
With respect to CHAI, I will step down from the
Board. We, along with the CHAI Board, are additionally considering a
range of options to ensure that its vital work will continue and will
announce details soon.
The Clinton Foundation was originally
established to build the Clinton Presidential Center and Library in
Little Rock, and the work there will continue regardless of the outcome
of the election. Since opening its doors 12 years ago, more than 4
million people have visited the Center and it has helped to inspire new
generations of leaders—including through the Presidential Leadership
Scholars program, a bipartisan educational partnership with the George
W. Bush Presidential Center, the George Bush Presidential Library
Foundation, and the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation. The Center has
lived up to my vision and much more, including as an important
educational and cultural resource and driver of economic growth for the
Little Rock community.
Finally, the Clinton Global Initiative
(CGI) has accomplished even more than I dreamed when it began in 2005,
and we’ve made the decision that the Annual Meeting this September will
be the last, and that we will no longer hold our CGI America meetings.
Nine years ago in my book Giving, I wrote, “I want to continue
these meetings for at least a decade, with the objective of creating a
global network of citizen activists who reach across the divides of our
interdependent world to build real communities of shared opportunities,
shared responsibilities, and a genuine sense of belonging.” That is
exactly what CGI, its members, and its dedicated staff have done.
We
started CGI to create a new kind of community built around the new
realities of our modern world, where problem-solving requires the active
partnership of government, business, and civil society. We’ve brought
together leaders from across sectors and around the world both to talk
about our challenges, and to commit publicly to actually do something
about them. It was something different, but our bet paid off: there was
a hunger for the chance to make an impact that brought together people
and organizations with the resources to make a difference with people
who have the knowledge and experience to turn good ideas into action.
Corporations, governments, and non-governmental organizations began
combining their strengths and finding entirely new approaches to old
problems. CGI quickly became an embodiment of what works best in the
21st-century world, and what has been behind all of the Clinton
Foundation’s work since the very beginning: networks of cooperation.
This
partnership model, which may seem self-evident today, was simply not
how philanthropy and corporate responsibility worked over a decade ago.
Today, members of the Clinton Global Initiative have made more than
3,500 commitments that are already improving over 430 million lives in
more than 180 countries. These projects will continue to make an impact
around the world and in the U.S. The idea that working together beats
going it alone has caught on well beyond our CGI community.
It’s
been one of the great honors of my life to be part of this special
community, and I hope the hard work and benefits of CGI’s great staff
and its members’ creative cooperation will keep rippling out into the
world. The commitment model has been adopted by other forums and I hope
that more will do so, or that new organizations will arise to do this
work. While this year will be the last for the CGI Annual Meeting and
CGI America, I hope and believe we can and should preserve CGI
University (CGI U), our meeting that brings university students together
to develop innovative solutions to important challenges in the U.S. and
around the world.
In addition to continuing CGI U and all of the
activities of the Clinton Presidential Center, the Foundation will also
continue those domestic programs that can be maintained with the funding
restrictions we announced today.
The process of determining the
Clinton Foundation’s future if Hillary becomes President has not been
easy. It’s an unprecedented situation, so there’s no blueprint to
follow. Part of what has made the Foundation successful over the last
15 years has been our understanding that solving problems and creating
opportunities faster, better, and in the most cost-effective way
sometimes means changing course.
Working alongside so many
passionate people around the world who share our goals and believe in
our approach has made these 15 years one of the most rewarding chapters
of my life, as I know it has been for Chelsea. While my role in that
work will change, the work itself should continue because so many people
are committed to it and so many more are relying on it.
Chelsea
and I are very proud of what the Clinton Foundation, its affiliates, and
its partners have accomplished, and we are profoundly grateful to the
staff, to those who have funded our work, and to all the people with
whom we have worked and from whom we have learned so much. We will try
to be faithful to them, their values, and their work in effecting this
transition as quickly and effectively as possible.
Sincerely,
Bill Clinton
************************************
The
Clinton Foundation convenes businesses, governments, NGOs, and
individuals to improve global health and wellness, increase opportunity
for girls and women, reduce childhood obesity, create economic
opportunity and growth, and help communities address the effects of
climate change.
Hillary for America Chair John Podesta released the following statement:
“The
Foundation has already laid out the unprecedented steps the charity
will take if Hillary Clinton becomes president. Donald Trump needs to
come clean with voters about his complex network
of for-profit businesses that are hundreds of millions of dollars in
debt to big banks, including the state-owned Bank of China, and other
business groups with ties to the Kremlin. Donald Trump should stop
hiding behind fake excuses and release his tax returns
and immediately disclose the full extent of his business interests. He
must commit to fully divesting himself from all of his business
conflicts to ensure that he is not letting his own financial interests
affect decisions made by his potential administration.”
