The Clintons kept their speaking fees high even for small charity events


The latest chapter in the ongoing saga of Clinton family finance scandals reveals that the Clintons did not discount their high speaking fees even when working with relatively small charitable organizations.
For example, Politico notes that Hillary Clinton spoke at a fundraising event for the Boys and Girls Club of Long Beach, California in 2014, charging the nonprofit $200,000 for the evening. Five years earlier, former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice charged the same charity just $60,000 — and donated most of it back to the club immediately.
While many nonprofits were reluctant to reveal details of their interactions with the Clintons — some cited "concerns about angering the family" — Politico found that Bill Clinton took in another $150,000 from the same Boys and Girls Club, along with $100,000 from a British nonprofit called the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children.
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Marc A. Pitman, a fundraising expert who works with nonprofits, said he is unaware of "any other foundation that collects speaking fees" the way the Clinton Foundation does.
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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.
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