The Donald J. Trump Foundation gave away $10.9 million from 2001 to 2014, taking a scattershot approach to philanthropy with donations to more than 400 different charities, according to a Forbes analysis of 14 years of IRS documents. Among the notable recipients: the William J. Clinton Foundation, a state branch of the ACLU and a nonprofit run by the New York Times, which Trump routinely criticizes on Twitter. Only $2.8 million of that money came from Trump himself.
The biggest single beneficiary was the Police Athletic League, a New York City charity that works with local police officers to provide summer camps, universal pre-K programs and after-school activities for children. According to the charity’s website, Trump serves on its board of directors alongside fellow billionaire investor Ron Perelman and New York supermarket magnate John Catsimatidis. It is the only charity that got a donation from the Trump Foundation every single year from 2001-2014, ultimately receiving $832,500, 8% of the foundation’s total gifts during the 14-year stretch.
An estimated 36% of the foundation’s money went to roughly 100 organizations promoting healthcare, the Forbes examination revealed. The Trump Foundation gave more than $465,000 to both the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Operation Smile, which offers free surgeries to children born with cleft palates in developing countries. The foundation gave at least $326,000 to New York Presbyterian Hospital and $250,750 to its sister institution, the Hospital for Special Surgery, which is also based in New York City.
The Trump Foundation gave most of its money to traditional philanthropic causes, including the United Way, a handful of schools, and more than 10 museums. But he also appears to have given to a smattering of unconventional causes, including spirit teams at a Florida university, a political group supporting a state attorney general who was said to be considering an investigation into a Trump business, and a charity of a man who had reportedly sued one of Trump’s golf courses for not paying him a million-dollar prize after he hit a hole-in-one during a tournament.
The Trump Foundation donated to foundations attached to famous athletes, including Tiger Woods, Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, Magic Johnson, Jack Nicklaus, Mariano Rivera, Annika Sorenstam, Chris Evert, Lance Armstrong and Peyton Manning.
Trump’s foundation also gave money to charities that put on galas, including the Celebrity Fight Night Foundation, which hosts an event honoring Muhammad Ali that Trump has attended. Other charities that Trump supported organized major golf outings.
His foundation gave $135,000 to charities of past presidents, including $110,000 to the William J. Clinton Foundation in 2009 and 2010, just as Hillary Clinton was beginning her term as Secretary of State under President Obama. Trump’s foundation also donated $25,000 to the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation in 2005.
Several causes that the Trump Foundation supported seem to contradict the image that the president’s detractors tried to paint during his campaign. After he tweeted a photo showing Hillary Clinton with a backdrop of cash, next to a six-pointed star emblazoned with the words “Most corrupt candidate ever,” some people said the tweet was anti-Semitic. Yet Trump, whose son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner is a devout Jew, oversaw a foundation that donated more than $500,000 to Jewish causes, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Jewish National Fund.
Some of the foundation’s other donations fly in the face of the image that Trump himself has promoted. In 2002, his foundation gave $10,000 to a charity run by the New York Times, and in 2005 his foundation gave $10,000 to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press. But today he describes the media as the “opposition party.” Trump’s foundation donated $325 to a state branch of the American Civil Liberties Union in 2013. Now the ACLU is one of his staunchest opponents in the fight for a 90-day ban on immigrants from seven predominantly-Muslim countries.
Most of the money in the Trump Foundation from 2001-2014 did not originally come from Donald Trump. Between 2001 and 2008, the president donated a total of $2.8 million, or 0.08% of his $3.7 billion fortune, to his own foundation. From 2009-2014, Trump gave $0 to the group. He remained its president but financed its activities with money from outsiders, including Comedy Central and NBCUniversal.
In September the New York attorney general ordered the Trump Foundation to stop soliciting donations, saying it was violating state law that requires foundations that solicit money to register with the state charities bureau and submit annual audited financial statements. The order came one day after the Washington Post, which has written extensively on the Trump Foundation, reported that the organization had not registered as a charity soliciting money.
After Trump stopped putting his own money into the foundation, its focus appears to have shifted. From 2001-2008, an estimated 29% of the foundation’s gifts were going to healthcare causes. That jumped to an estimated 42% from 2009-2014, when the foundation collected only outsiders’ money. Donations to arts and culture causes, on the other hand, dropped from an estimated 11% to 4%.
Even though he wasn’t contributing any of his own cash to the foundation, Trump directed $100,000 in 2010 to the foundation of his son Eric, who serves on the board of the Donald J. Trump Foundation. Eric Trump’s foundation, unlike his father’s, has focused its giving on one charity, a pediatric cancer center called St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. A spokesperson for Donald Trump did not respond to a request for comment.