Joe Biden to begin fundraising to build presidential library in Delaware

Former US president Joe Biden has decided to build his presidential library in Delaware and has tapped a group of former aides, friends and political allies to begin the heavy lift of fundraising and finding a site for the museum and archive.

The Joe and Jill Biden Foundation this past week approved a 13-person governance board that is charged with steering the project. The board includes former secretary of state Antony Blinken, longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, prolific Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford and others with deep ties to the one-term president and his wife.

Biden’s library team has the daunting task of raising money for the 46th president’s legacy project at a moment when his party has become fragmented about the way ahead and many big Democratic donors have stopped writing checks.

It also remains to be seen whether corporations and institutional donors that have historically donated to presidential library projects – regardless of the party of the former president – will be more hesitant to contribute, with Donald Trump in the White House for a second term, maligning Biden on a daily basis and savaging groups he deems left-leaning.

“There’s certainly folks – folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” Gifford, who was named chair of the library board, told the Associated Press. “That being said … we’re not going to create a budget, we’re not going to set a goal for ourselves that we don’t believe we can hit.”

The George HW Bush library’s construction cost was about $43m when it opened in 1997. Bill Clinton’s cost about $165m. George W Bush’s team met its $500m fundraising goal before the library was dedicated.

The Obama Foundation has set a whopping $1.6bn fundraising goal for construction, sustaining global programming and seeding an endowment for the Chicago presidential center that is slated to open next year.

Biden’s library team is still in the early stages of planning.

Construction and support for programming for the libraries are paid for with private funds donated to the non-profit organizations established by the former presidents.