Commander-in-Chief to Activist-in-Chief

Pete Souza, White House

As his appointment at the White House approached, there was so much churn in Washington that Robert Ross was sure the president would cancel. It was September 2013, early in Barack Obama’s second term, and he faced fierce opposition from a Republican-controlled Congress that soon led to a shutdown of the federal government. The president had ordered airstrikes in Iraq and threatened military action in Syria. His approval rating had sunk to 45 percent.

Dr. Ross, president of the California Endowment, and executives from several other grant makers, including the Ford, Annie E. Casey, Andrew W. Mellon, and Open Society foundations, were scheduled to meet with Mr. Obama to discuss ways to improve the lives of boys and young men of color.

At best, the physician and foundation leader thought, the president would pop by the meeting, say hello, and pose for a few photos. Instead, Mr. Obama spent 90 minutes with the foundation officials, getting into what Dr. Ross calls a “deep and authentic” policy conversation that showed the president’s strong emotional tie to the issue.

“He was very clear that this wasn’t a press or media opportunity for him,” Dr. Ross recalls. “He said, ‘Look, this is important enough to me that I’m not going to be done with this when this administration is over.’ "

As his tenure as commander-in-chief winds down, there is widespread speculation on Mr. Obama’s next role. A U.S. Supreme Court justice, some say. Or maybe a university president. Some even suggest Mr. Obama, a hoops fan, will take an ownership stake in a professional basketball team. He hasn’t laid out plans, but nonprofit leaders already expect him to be a fundraising juggernaut.

“His ability to have a profound impact both domestically and internationally is almost unprecedented among former presidents,” says former Secretary of Education Arne Duncan. “It’s a pretty amazing opportunity.”

Regardless of the issues he picks, many observers predict Mr. Obama will coax corporations to beef up their giving and press for market-based incentives for investing in social programs, as he has done in office. Another Obama hallmark: better measurement of how well investments in things like reducing poverty and improving the criminal-justice system actually work.

Started Early

Mr. Obama’s relationship with the nonprofit world is a long and intimate one. In his 20s, he worked as a community organizer for the Developing Communities Project, a formative experience. He sat on the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation’s board of directors for eight years, beginning in 1994.

Once in the White House, Mr. Obama actively courted nonprofits. One example: My Brother’s Keeper, the administration effort to support minority males that began after the 2013 meeting with foundation leaders and has helped generate more than $600 million in government, federal, and philanthropic grants and about $1 billion in low-interest loans.

Mr. Obama’s biggest legacy to philanthropy may be the Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation. It was designed to attract business support of social policies and encourage innovation and collaboration among nonprofits, corporations, and public officials. Investment decisions were based on data and stringent measurement of results, says Michele Jolin, who helped create the office as a member of the Obama transition team. For any government program or philanthropic investment to be credible, she says, it has to quantify its progress.

“The president himself believed this to the core,” says Ms. Jolin, who subsequently co-founded Results for America, a nonprofit that works to steer public funds to programs that use data to demonstrate that they work.

The Office of Social Innovation and Civic Participation, first led by former Google executive Sonal Shah, was a hub for foundations and social-welfare groups to meet with policy makers and corporate executives. Melody Barnes, a former top presidential adviser, believes its spirit will live on in Mr. Obama’s future work.

Marc Pokempner

“There was a level of innovation and engagement with the nonprofit and philanthropic communities that took their relationship with the White House to the next level,” she says. “A lot of the work fostered in his administration has really brought in the business sector. I wouldn’t be surprised if his work in the future builds on those trends.”

Nonprofits Are ‘Salivating’

There is no doubt that Mr. Obama stands to be a nonprofit titan as a private citizen, say those interviewed for this story.

“A number of us are salivating about what this president will do after the White House,” Dr. Ross says. “He made it clear to us he was willing to be a warrior in the fight.”

As soon as he leaves the White House, the calls will start, predicted Diana Aviv, president at Feeding America, one of the biggest charities in the country in terms of fundraising.

“Everybody on the planet is going to invite him to be on their board,” says Ms. Aviv, who previously led Independent Sector, a major membership organization for nonprofits.

When he won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009, Mr. Obama distributed the $1.4 million gift to 10 nonprofits that do a range of work. He gave the most, $250,000, to Fisher House, which provides housing for families of patients near Veterans Administration medical facilities. More than half of the money went to groups that provide scholarships, including the Appalachian Leadership and Education Foundation, the Hispanic Scholarship Fund, and the United Negro College Fund.

The president and the first lady gave about $64,000 — nearly 15 percent of their combined income — to charities in 2015, according to an analysis of the couple’s tax records by Reuters. Fisher House received $9,066, the largest gift.

Last year, the Obama Foundation, which is overseeing the design and construction of his presidential library in Chicago’s South Side, reported nearly $2 million in contributions, a fraction of the total the foundation is expected to attract once Mr. Obama leaves office. The foundation declined to provide current fundraising figures.

White House Years

Other hints about the president’s post-White House nonprofit work can be found in how his administration has treated the nonprofit field as a whole and the methods by which it has sought to include philanthropy in its work.

Ms. Aviv praised his efforts to steer federal grants to high-poverty “Promise Zone” neighborhoods. While the president was generally supportive of nonprofits, she says, he had a few “slip-ups.”

Among those was a repeated effort to limit the charitable tax deduction, which Ms. Aviv says would have crimped nonprofit fundraising had it become law.

“We were unable to persuade him in all the years it was a mistaken approach,” she says. “It didn’t seem wise to me that he would pick a fight with advocates who were supporting his work. It resulted in a huge amount of energy and effort focused on that issue” instead of being used to push for spending on federal programs that benefit particular nonprofits.

In 2015, President Obama announced the creation of a free-standing nonprofit, My Brother’s Keeper Alliance, to work on many of the same issues as the namesake White House effort. In doing so, he said he would dedicate himself to the issue “for the rest of my life.” The group has drawn more than $80 million in largely corporate pledges; donors include Discovery Communications, News Corp., and PepsiCo.

Dual Approach

Mr. Obama’s history as a community organizer and his use of technology to draw support during his two presidential campaigns have led some to believe that he’ll focus on getting people, particularly those in marginalized groups, to participate in civic affairs.

Others, including Helene Gayle, chief executive of the McKinsey Social Initiative, point to remarks Mr. Obama made this summer about work his mother did with the U.S. Agency for International Development, with the support of the Ford Foundation, as an indication that global aid will be a top priority. “Given his links to his father’s heritage in Kenya, I wouldn’t be surprised if he continues to have a focus in Africa,” says Dr. Gayle, former chair of the Presidential Advisory Council on HIV/AIDS.

Will Mr. Obama direct his charitable work as a remote superstar, or will he get involved in the nitty-gritty?

Ms. Barnes, the former White House adviser, predicts her former boss will take a dual approach. As an internationally famous figure, he’ll use his celebrity on the global stage to galvanize and animate people. But, she says, the president “likes being immersed in the critical issues” and will likely take a hands-on approach, working closely with grass-roots organizations.

Irv Katz, president emeritus of the National Human Services Assembly, hopes Mr. Obama will be more than a figurehead. At 55, the president potentially has decades of work ahead of him, Mr. Katz points out.

“He’s far too young to give up on an active role,” says Mr. Katz, who is now principal of Civic Sector Strategies, a consulting firm. “There’s so much more youth and talent there than for him to give over his life to international speech making.”

Predecessors’ Examples

Previous presidents have each managed their charitable work differently, points out Michelle Nunn, chief executive of CARE USA. George H.W. Bush, for instance, has played a supportive role at Points of Light, a nonprofit Ms. Nunn used to lead. Jimmy Carter, by contrast, presides over the Carter Center directly, she says.

Perhaps the most obvious reference point for Mr. Obama is Bill Clinton, who left office at age 54 and started the Clinton Foundation, a fundraising colossus that had total revenue of $338 million in 2014, including $217 million in donations.

Mr. Clinton has been able to use his charisma to gather people to work on issues that were prominent during his administration, Ms. Nunn says, such as HIV treatment in Africa and childhood obesity in the United States.

Mr. Obama, she says, will likely use his “intellectual heft” and interest in measuring how well social investments work.

“President Clinton has used his unique skills and style in a way that is fitting for him,” she says. “I think President Obama will have a different approach.”

During his two terms in office, Mr. Obama laid out “pieces of an agenda” for his post-presidential career, like My Brother’s Keeper, Mr. Duncan says. That agenda, he says, will include a strategic effort to make sure corporate support of young black men continues beyond January 2017, when Mr. Obama leaves the White House.

Mr. Duncan, like many administration veterans, has assumed a leadership position in the social sphere. He is in the process of setting up a Chicago office of the Emerson Collective — the philanthropic venture founded by Laurene Powell Jobs, Apple founder Steve Jobs’s widow — that will foster programs to reduce violence in the city. Mr. Duncan says he is sure that Mr. Obama will draw upon his early work fighting poverty as a community organizer on Chicago’s South Side after he leaves the White House.

“For many of us, this is who we are,” he says. “It’s part of our roots.”