WASHINGTON (AP) — Ivanka Trump said Thursday she is donating proceeds from her upcoming book to charity, with the first grants going to the National Urban League and Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
The Ivanka M. Trump Charitable Fund has been established to receive the unpaid portion of her advance and future royalties from “Women Who Work: Rewriting the Rules for Success,” which is due out May 2.
The fund will support “the economic empowerment for women and girls,” Trump said in a statement. The first grants, worth $100,000 each, will support an Urban League program for entrepreneurs, and a Boys & Girls Clubs’ program on science, technology, engineering and math for girls and underrepresented youth.
The announcement about the charitable fund comes amid ethical questions over possible conflicts of interest between the first daughter’s role as an adviser to her father, President Donald Trump, and her self-named lifestyle brand. Ivanka Trump says she has stepped away from daily management of the business, established a trust to oversee it and will recuse herself from any issues that present conflicts.
Trump also said she will not do any publicity for the book, “out of an abundance of caution and to avoid the appearance of using my official role” to promote it.
Ivanka Trump’s book was completed before Donald Trump won the presidential election in November. The release was originally set for early March but was pushed back as Ivanka Trump moved her family to Washington.
The fund will receive a minimum of $425,000, which is the unpaid portion of Trump’s advance minus expenses. All future royalties beyond that will also go to the fund for five years, the statement said.
Excerpts of the book were available on Amazon Thursday. In the introduction, Trump writes that she wants to “change the narrative around women and work” and “provide solutions that educate and empower women to be their best selves, both personally and professionally.”
The younger Trump is taking a different– and more up front –approach to charitable giving than her father has.
Trump’s inaugural committee has pledged to donate any excess funds from the record-setting $107 million it raised for the January celebratory events. But neither Trump nor the committee has specified who they have in mind or how much they have left over.
Last year, Trump skipped a Republican debate to raise money for veterans’ charities. The millions of dollars he and several wealthy friends pledged only reached charities after reporters pressed his campaign about the issue months later.
As president, Trump has said he’ll donate his $400,000 salary to charity. His press secretary announced that he’d given his first three months’ of pay to the National Park Service. It’s unclear where the rest will go.
At the White House, Ivanka Trump has focused on economic policies relating to women. Her position is unpaid. Next week, she’ll travel to Berlin at the invitation of German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a women-focused effort within the Group of 20 major economic powers.
Ivanka Trump’s efforts to work as a champion for women have met with some skepticism. Critics note she remained silent about White House-backed health care legislation. The bill, which failed to win adequate congressional support, would have blocked federal payments for a year to Planned Parenthood and could have reduced access to maternity and pediatric care.
In a recent interview with CBS, Ivanka Trump pushed back against the idea that she did not challenge her father, saying that “where I disagree with my father, he knows it, and I express myself with total candor.”
(Copyright (c) 2024 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)