Did the Obama Foundation publicly disclose donors for the basketball court project and what amounts were listed?

1. What the original claim asserts and what the documents actually show

The central claim asks whether the Obama Foundation “publicly disclosed donors for the basketball court project and what amounts were listed.” The contemporaneous Obama Foundation statements and press materials identify a set of named contributors to the Home Court capital campaign—HPS Investment Partners, the Knight Foundation, the Nike Foundation, Andy Fang and Carol Zhao, and Arn and Nancy Tellem—but they do not publish specific contribution amounts for those named donors in the Home Court announcement. Multiple analyses of the same materials conclude the same: names are disclosed; dollar amounts for the Home Court project are not disclosed in the cited Home Court materials ^{[1] [4] [5]}. This means the claim is partly true—donor identities were publicly named—but false if the expectation was that the announcement included project-level dollar figures.

2. Where reporting shows broader foundation-level donations—and what that does and does not prove

Independent reporting and foundation-level summaries indicate the Obama Foundation has publicly reported large gifts to the organization overall—notably multi‑million dollar gifts such as $125 million from Brian Chesky and $100 million from Jeff Bezos—and public contributor lists for large donors in certain years. These foundation-level disclosures demonstrate that the organization does make some high-level donor information public, and in a few cases reports specific amounts for major donors to the Foundation broadly. However, these foundation-wide amounts are distinct from the Home Court capital campaign disclosures, and the sources provided do not tie those large, named donations specifically to the basketball court project ^{[2] [3] [6]}. Thus, citing foundation-wide gift totals does not prove that Home Court donor amounts were disclosed.

3. The Foundation’s Home Court communications: transparency choices and limits

In the Home Court press release and descriptive materials, the Foundation chose to name contributors as part of a capital campaign narrative while omitting project-level financial detail. The press materials list partner organizations and donors by name but stop short of providing a comprehensive donor roster or per-donor dollar figures for Home Court. That approach is consistent across multiple analyses of the same materials and suggests a deliberate disclosure policy for the project announcement that prioritizes donor recognition without itemized financial public accounting for that facility ^{[1] [4] [5]}. The absence of amounts in those materials leaves open questions about how much of the Home Court funding comes from named donors versus other sources such as internal reserves, public funds, or undesignated gifts.

4. Contrasting accounts, reporting gaps, and possible motivations for partial disclosure

Different sources and reporting emphasize different facts: the Foundation’s Home Court notice highlights partners and named supporters but lacks financial granularity, while other reporting and organization-level summaries document major foundation donors and, in a few cases, their gift sizes. This split in reporting may reflect institutional choices about donor privacy, campaign-level confidentiality, or strategic communications—or simply the fact that some large gifts were made to the Foundation generally rather than earmarked for Home Court. Critics and watchdog reporting about the Foundation’s broader finances, including reserve funding questions, underscore why observers demand clearer project-level accounting, even though the provided Home Court materials do not deliver it ^{[7] [6] [3]}.

5. Bottom line: what is verifiable now and where to look next

The verifiable conclusion from the supplied documents is clear: the Obama Foundation publicly named several Home Court donors but did not disclose the dollar amounts they gave to that project in the cited materials ^{[1] [4] [5]}. For anyone seeking definitive project-level numbers, the next steps are to request the Foundation’s campaign financial statements, donor lists with designations, or IRS filings that might break out restricted gifts; alternatively, check subsequent press releases or investigative coverage that could connect specific gifts to Home Court after the initial announcement ^{[6] [2]}. These follow-ups are necessary because the provided sources document names but leave amounts for the basketball-court project unspecified.