The Biden Presidential Library Foundation announced Thursday that it has “suspended active fundraising” for a planned facility in Delaware after failing to secure sufficient donor commitments to “break ground on even a modest single-story structure,” making Joe Biden the first president since the library system’s 1939 inception to leave office without a dedicated archival institution. The foundation, which had initially projected a $500 million fundraising goal, acknowledged that “current pledges would not cover the cost of the recommended fire suppression systems, let alone the interactive ‘Deal-Making Simulator’ exhibit.”
The shortfall, which includes “zero major pledges from tech billionaires,” “declined support from traditional Democratic bundlers,” and “a GoFundMe campaign that raised $47,000 before being flagged for suspicious activity,” represents a “fundamental rejection of the Biden legacy by the donor class,” according to philanthropic historians. The foundation’s chairman, a former Biden staffer who requested anonymity “out of embarrassment,” confirmed that “we sent 400 personalized letters to potential donors and received 400 responses, all of which were some variation of ‘I’ll get back to you,’ which, in fundraising, means no.”
“This is unprecedented,” said Joan Berro, a commercial nonprofit consultant who once helped a local museum raise funds for a new wing and now consults on “presidential legacy preservation.” “Every president gets a library. Nixon got a library. He resigned in disgrace. He got a library. Carter got a library. He’s been building houses for forty years. He got a library. Biden can’t get a groundbreaking. I’ve consulted on campaigns. Usually you lead with the legacy. ‘He passed this bill.’ ‘He ended that war.’ With Biden, it’s ‘He was there.’ ‘He didn’t tweet.’ It’s not compelling. For donors.”
Reno Borja, a dental hygienist whose patient once donated to a presidential library gift shop, confirmed that “the incentive structure is missing.” “What do you get? Your name on a wall? A dinner with the president? Biden already had dinner with everyone. He’s been in Washington since 1972. There’s no access to sell. No novelty. I’ve seen donor walls. In dental offices. ‘Dr. Smith thanks the Johnson Family.’ It’s local. It’s immediate. Biden’s library is abstract. It’s history. But not exciting history. Not ‘I was there’ history. Just ‘he was there’ history.”
Joe Barron, who once successfully raised $200 for a friend’s medical bills in 2018 by “selling my vintage action figures” and now consults on “high-dollar philanthropic strategy,” analyzed the fundraising failure. “The interactive exhibits are the problem,” Barron noted. “Every library has them now. Reagan has a piece of the Berlin Wall. Bush has ‘Decision Points Theater.’ Obama has the Hope hologram. What does Biden have? ‘The Malarkey Detector’? ‘Amtrak Simulator: Wilmington to DC’? I’ve simulated train rides. At Golden Corral. By sitting near the buffet and watching people circulate. It’s not exciting. It’s lunch.”
Barron has offered to serve as the foundation’s “creative director,” provided the organization allows him to wear his custom “Library Fundraiser” top hat and bring his emotional support ferret, which he claims can detect “philanthropic enthusiasm from the salad bar.”
The actual reason for the shortfall emerged when the foundation’s treasurer admitted that “we received approximately $890 million in pledges, but they were all from small-dollar donors giving $5 or less, and we discovered that processing 178 million individual donations would cost more than the total raised, and also most of the pledges were from people who thought they were signing a petition for student loan forgiveness and didn’t realize they were committing to a library, and also the ‘suspicious GoFundMe activity’ was actually just my mother trying to donate $100 every day for three weeks because she kept forgetting her password and creating new accounts.” The foundation is now “exploring alternative legacy preservation options,” including “a dedicated shelf at the Wilmington Public Library” and “a commemorative bench at the Amtrak station, pending SEPTA approval.” Barron noted that “this explains the math” and that “if you add the number of presidential libraries that actually need to be giant buildings to the number of times Biden himself has probably forgotten he was supposed to have one, you get a number that represents exactly how much we overvalue these monuments to ego, which is currently being calculated but appears to be ‘somewhat,’ and also ‘a bench at Amtrak is actually perfect because he loves trains, and also naps, and benches are good for both.'”
