CHICAGO -- After turning over the White House next month to a successor who aims to scuttle some of his key initiatives, President Barack Obama and his foundation will begin seeking out donors to lead their fund drive for a presidential library and museum on Chicago's South Side.
Obama's library planners have declined to provide a cost estimate, but the George W. Bush library and endowment cost more than $500 million. Adding to the pressure, the Obama project is the first to be built under sharply increased federal requirements for a sustaining endowment. Obama chose to add another hurdle by pledging not to personally raise money for the project during his time in office.
So the nonprofit Obama Foundation faces a steep climb.
Fundraisers also wonder whether the election of Republican Donald Trump will affect the campaign.
The first post-presidential year will be pivotal, experts say.
"The success of a really big campaign like this hinges on a small number of very large gifts at the beginning," said David Jones, who raised money for former President George H.W. Bush's library in College Station, Texas, and now heads the facility's foundation.
He is among a number of observers who think that Trump's election victory might help with some of the work ahead for Obama's Democratic loyalists.
"His friends know there needs to be an institution that will keep his legacy and his accomplishments very much alive," Jones said. "If they don't do it through the library, the risk is his legacy could get dismantled. If I were involved in this campaign, that's what I'd be saying to the donor prospects."
The Obama Foundation in Hyde Park declined to comment on fundraising.
Typically, fundraisers for presidential libraries find their lead donors from among the biggest supporters to election campaigns and inaugurals. In Obama's case, the pool is deep. He lifted the bar for presidential campaigns, raising nearly $750 million in 2008 and $722 million in 2012.
"There are a lot of rich, liberal donors who ... will open up their checkbooks," said presidential library expert Benjamin Hufbauer, an associate professor at the University of Louisville.
Also, Obama "is going to be leaving the presidency with [high] popularity numbers, and Michelle Obama is a rock star in her own right," said Skip Rutherford, who was local planning coordinator for the Clinton Presidential Center in Little Rock.
Over the course of his swift political rise, Obama attracted support from Hollywood figures such as DreamWorks co-founders, Steven Spielberg, David Geffen and Jeffrey Katzenberg, and from business leaders including Warren Buffett and George Soros. One of Chicago's Hyatt heirs, billionaire Penny Pritzker, his commerce secretary since 2013, was a lead fundraiser for his first presidential campaign.
Early money for the library project has flowed from a coterie of friends and supporters, among them tech executives, venture capitalists, real estate developers and foundations, including one started by Star Wars creator George Lucas, whose plans for a museum in Chicago fizzled this year. Among the big Chicago-area donors, at $1 million each as of year-end 2015, are the media tycoon Fred Eychaner, the Joyce Foundation and the hedge fund executive Michael Sacks, a close ally of Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The mayor is a former chief of staff in the Obama White House.
The Obama Foundation has taken a number of steps aimed at avoiding the sorts of controversies that impede the Clinton Foundation's fundraising efforts.
While Obama remains in office, the foundation agreed not to accept contributions from for-profit entities, federal lobbyists, or foreigners or foreign agents.
"We are limiting our fundraising now to a group of longtime supporters of the president and limiting the amount that they can contribute," Martin Nesbitt, chairman of the Obama Foundation, said this summer. "But when the term is over, we will modify that in a way that facilitates us getting to our fundraising goals."
The Obama Presidential Center, which will include a library, museum and offices in Jackson Park on the South Side, will be the 14th presidential library in a system founded in 1939 by the National Archives and Records Administration. Several other presidential libraries predate that program.
The system is kept afloat by public and private money. The national archive spent $67 million in the last fiscal year on library operations and programs, with additional support coming from privately funded library endowments. Local governments and universities often provide backing, too.
The Obama Foundation will raise private money for the center's construction and for an endowment to assist the National Archives' operation of the library and museum. The foundation must raise a sum equal to 60 percent of construction costs for the endowment, up from a 20 percent requirement previously in place.
The University of Chicago, which put forward the bid that placed the project in Jackson Park, is not participating in the fundraising.
The city is providing the land in Jackson Park at a nominal cost and plans to support the presidential center's development by directing part of its annual infrastructure spending to neighboring communities.
A number of observers questioned whether public resources should assist presidential library projects.
"We're a little bit duped as taxpayers to be providing government support for what are essentially publicity centers for presidents," said Hufbauer, author of the book Presidential Temples.
Library archives also can be meaningful resources for scholars, Hufbauer acknowledged, though it can take many years until an individual president's materials are reviewed and released to the public.
A Section on 12/28/2016