To commemorate the 10th anniversary of the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, Petra Nemcova, a Czech model who survived the disaster by clinging to a palm tree, decided to pull out all the stops for the annual fundraiser of her school-building charity, the Happy Hearts Fund.
She booked Cipriani 42nd Street, a luxury restaurant in Manhattan, which greeted guests with Bellini cocktails on silver trays. She flew in Sheryl Crow with her band and crew for a 20-minute set. She special-ordered heart-shaped floral centerpieces, heart-shaped chocolate parfaits, heart-shaped tiramisu and, because orange is the charity's color, an orange carpet rather than a red one. She imported a Swiss auctioneer and handed out orange rulers to serve as auction paddles, playfully threatening to use hers to spank the highest bidder for an Ibiza vacation.
The gala cost $363,413. But the real splurge? Bill Clinton.
The former president of the United States agreed to accept a lifetime achievement award at the June 2014 event after Nemcova offered a $500,000 contribution to the Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation. The donation, made late last year after the foundation sent the charity an invoice, amounted to almost a quarter of the evening's net proceeds - enough to build 10 preschools in Indonesia.
Happy Hearts' former executive director believes the transaction was a quid pro quo, which rerouted donations intended for a small charity with the concrete mission of rebuilding schools after natural disasters to a large foundation with a broader agenda and a budget 100 times bigger.
"The Clinton Foundation had rejected the Happy Hearts Fund invitation more than once, until there was a thinly veiled solicitation and then the offer of an honorarium," said the former executive director, Sue Veres Royal, who held that position at the time of the gala and was dismissed a few weeks later amid conflicts over the gala and other issues.
Press officers for Nemcova and the Clinton Foundation said on Thursday that the foundation had not solicited the donation and that the money would be used for projects in Haiti, as yet undetermined.
The Happy Hearts Fund and the Clinton Foundation "have a shared goal of providing meaningful help to Haiti," the school charity's spokeswoman said. "We believe that we can create the most impactful change by working together."
Never publicly disclosed, the episode provides a window into the way the Clinton Foundation relies on the Clintons' prestige to amass donors large and small, offering the prospect, as described in the foundation's annual report, of lucrative global connections and participation in a worldwide mission to "unlock human potential" through "the power of creative collaboration."
Similarly, Nemcova, like other celebrity philanthropists, uses her fame to promote her charity - which has financed more than 110 schools, mostly kindergartens - just as she uses Happy Hearts to position herself as a model-humanitarian.
"This is primarily a small but telling example of the way the Clintons operate," said Doug , who directs the master's program in fundraising management at Columbia University. "The model has responsibility; she paid a high price for a feel-good moment with Bill Clinton. But he was riding the back of this small charity for what? A half-million bucks? I find it - what would be the word? - distasteful."
A Shared Interest
In her letter of invitation to Bill Clinton, Nemcova, then chairwoman of her charity's board, said she wanted to show her appreciation for his "inspirational leadership" after disasters.
"My gratitude to you is so strong that should you accept, we will schedule our event commemorating the 10th anniversary around your schedule," she wrote, speaking of their shared dedication to the survivors of both the tsunami and the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
When the tsunami struck in December 2004, Nemcova, who had been featured on the cover of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue the previous year, was vacationing in Thailand with her boyfriend, a fashion photographer named Simon Atlee. They were swept from their beach cottage and separated in the turbulent waters; Atlee died.
Nemcova, her pelvis shattered, held fast to a tree for hours until she was rescued, listening impotently to the cries of children, she has said, which later motivated her to found her child-centric charity.
Happy Hearts rebuilt two schools in Thailand while Bill Clinton was the United Nations' envoy for tsunami relief and reconstruction. Most of the charity's building has been in Indonesia after the earthquakes of 2006 and 2009.
After the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, Nemcova turned her attention to that small island nation, where both Bill Clinton and Hillary Rodham Clinton, as secretary of state, played outsize roles in the earthquake relief effort and the more problem-filled reconstruction. The country had attracted other celebrity benefactors, too, notably the actor Sean Penn, an ex-boyfriend of Nemcova's who had created his own relief organization and forged a relationship with Bill Clinton.
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