Former President Barack Obama’s name foundation saw net assets climb to nearly $1 billion by the end of 2023, but its fundraising efforts have slowed, according to its latest annual report and tax filing.
The foundation raised $129 million in 2023, its lowest sum of the last seven years, according to IRS Form 990 filings, which are required annually from nonprofits. The year before, it raised $311 million, though the bulk of that sum came from tech titans Jeff Bezos and Brian Chesky.
The development team raised $1.5 billion through the end of 2023, foundation spokeswoman Gloria Nlewedim told the Tribune in a statement, but “we saw fewer gifts of $25M+ than in previous years, which led to slightly below-average results,” last year.
The foundation did see growth in smaller-dollar donations below $1 million, “which is critical to building a long-term sustainable fundraising program,” she said. The foundation is on track to hit the five-year $1.6 billion fundraising goal it set in 2021. Among the biggest donors this year: Airbnb co-founder Joe Gebbia, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Northwestern Medicine, Apple and the Knight Foundation.
Though fundraising slackened, the foundation’s net assets increased to $962 million in 2023, up from $925 million the previous year.
The foundation also spent more on mission-driven programming than any other year: $34 million, according to its tax filing. Most of that programming focuses on mentorship and training. Since the foundation started, 1,081 participants in Obama’s Leaders, Fellows, and Scholars programs from nearly 150 countries have been trained, according to the report. It also funds grassroots organizations through its Girls Opportunity Alliance and My Brother’s Keeper Alliance.
That spending boost is “a testament to the Foundation’s robust growth and the expansion of our initiatives,” Nlewedim said. The foundation grew its full-time staff from 251 to 312, hosted a Leadership Convening in Athens, Greece, and gave out more grants, including under the My Brother’s Keeper initiative.
Salaries for staff members and executives climbed this year, tax returns show.
Annual filings also shed some light on construction costs for the center currently rising in Jackson Park. According to filings, the foundation paid Lakeside Alliance, the joint venture of construction companies building the Obama Presidential Center, about $270 million between 2019 and 2023. Architecture firm Tod Williams Billie Tsien, which designed the campus, was paid just over $37 million between 2017 and 2023.
In all, 52% of workforce hours were completed by Chicago residents, and 38% of workforce hours were performed by South and West Siders in 2023, according to the annual report. That’s slightly above the foundation’s promised levels (50% and 35%, respectively) and an improvement from 2022, when 41% of workforce hours were done by Chicagoans and 32% were performed by South and West Siders.
Fifty-four percent of contract spending was on diverse vendors — defined by the foundation as companies owned by Black and brown people, veterans, women, people with disabilities, members of the LGBTQ community and those who are socially and economically disadvantaged — up from 41% the year prior.
Those designs are slowly coming to life: “Workers completed substantial structural construction” of the Obama Presidential Center’s museum, forum building, Chicago Public Library branch and parking garage in 2023, according to the annual report.
The Obamas came to Chicago to break ground in the fall of 2021 after years of legal delays. The center is now set to open in 2026. The latest annual report included updated teasers of the finished product: a first-look virtual tour of the insides of the museum, the forum building next door and the campus.
The tour video — which the foundation says includes the latest interior designs — zooms through lobbies and gathering areas of the museum, its cafe and retail shop and restaurant space at the neighboring forum building. Much is left to the imagination: There are blank spaces where commissioned art will later be displayed, and the video did not include any comprehensive looks at exhibits, nor the inside of the planned Chicago Public Library branch.
The foundation separately released renderings of the athletic building’s “NBA grade” basketball court earlier this spring, emblazoned with a giant blue “O” at midcourt reminiscent of Obama’s presidential campaign logo.
The former president’s opening message for the annual report echoed many of the themes of his prime-time address at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago last month, where he urged people to listen to “people who don’t look like us or pray like us or see the world exactly like we do” and “tap into what Lincoln called ‘the better angels of our nature.’”