The Obama Foundation announced this week that it is recruiting 75 to 100 unpaid "Ambassadors" to greet visitors and guide guests when the Obama Presidential Center opens in Chicago's Jackson Park. The volunteers will staff a 19.3-acre campus that cost upwards of $850 million to build and is overseen by a CEO who pulled in $740,000 in compensation last year.

That CEO is Valerie Jarrett, Barack Obama's longtime confidante and former senior White House adviser, who has earned the same $740,000 figure in each of the last three years, according to federal tax filings. The foundation's total salaries and benefits ballooned from $18.5 million in 2018 to $43.7 million in 2024, with staffing reaching 337 employees and annual revenue approaching $210 million.

But for the people who will actually stand in the lobby and shake hands with visitors? The budget is zero.

The Billion-Dollar Campus That Needs Free Labor

The Obama Presidential Center is scheduled to open on Juneteenth 2026. It features a 22-story museum tower standing 225 feet tall, four floors of exhibits, and an 83-foot-tall abstract glass work collage by artist Julie Mehretu inspired by African and American history. The foundation projects $3.1 billion in economic impact over a decade, citing a Deloitte analysis.

None of that economic impact, apparently, will trickle down to the volunteers staffing the front lines.

Jarrett framed the program in the language Obama's world knows best: civic duty. The foundation said volunteerism reflects what it describes as Obama's "long-standing emphasis on civic service and community engagement," and cited 2.2 million volunteers mobilized during his presidential campaigns and national service initiatives like the Edward M. Kennedy Serve America Act and United We Serve. The Daily Mail reported.

Jarrett put it this way:

"The Obama Presidential Center is a place where the world meets the best of the city of Chicago, and our volunteers will help bring that vision to life every day."

She added that the Ambassadors would "create a welcoming and inclusive experience for visitors while representing the strength, resilience, and leadership of this community." The buzzwords are doing a lot of heavy lifting for a job listing that pays nothing.

Inclusion for Thee, Compensation for Me

The optics here are difficult to spin, even for a foundation that has turned spin into an art form. A nearly billion-dollar campus. A CEO earning three-quarters of a million dollars annually. A staff of 337 drawing from a $43.7 million payroll. And the ask to the community Obama once organized as a young man on Chicago's South Side: show up and work for free.

Jarrett told CBS News Chicago in December that contracting with racially diverse businesses was a priority, noting that more than 50 percent of construction contracts went to diverse firms and about one-third of the construction workforce came from Chicago's South and West Side neighborhoods. Nearly 800 residents participated in construction pre-apprenticeship programs. The foundation expects roughly 300 full- and part-time workers once the center opens.

So there is a paid workforce. It just doesn't include the people greeting you at the door.

Jarrett has spoken openly about the nature of her relationship with the Obamas. In her memoir, she wrote:

"I was afforded my unique access because I understood that being a friend is being a friend."

That friendship has paid well. Jarrett joined the Obama Foundation as CEO in 2021, overseeing the center's development while collecting $740,000 annually. The foundation's revenue and payroll have grown substantially under her watch. Whatever "being a friend" means in this context, it comes with a compensation package that most nonprofit executives would envy.

Community Organizing, Updated for the Donor Class

There is a particular irony in an institution built to celebrate community organizing, asking community members to donate their labor while its executive class thrives. The Obama brand has always rested on a narrative of service, of ordinary people lifting each other. That narrative rings hollow when the foundation can afford:

• $43.7 million in annual salaries and benefits
• $850 million in construction costs
• An 83-foot-tall commissioned art installation
• A 22-story museum tower

But not modest stipends for 100 people working the floor.

Jarrett said she hopes visitors "not only learn about President Obama and the people upon whose shoulders he stands, but also a little something about themselves and how they can go and bring change home to their own communities." She added that "everyone can do something to be a force for good."

The volunteers certainly will be. They'll be a force for good that subsidizes an organization sitting on $210 million in annual revenue.

What the Numbers Actually Say

This is a pattern familiar to anyone who watches how progressive institutions operate. The language is always about community, equity, and inclusion. The money flows upward. The foundation describes inclusion as "a strength," in Jarrett's words. But the structure of this volunteer program tells a different story: that the people closest to power get compensated handsomely, and the people closest to the community get a lanyard and a title.

The Obama Foundation is not a scrappy nonprofit stretching every dollar. Its revenue approached $210 million. Its payroll more than doubled in six years. Its campus cost nearly a billion dollars. Asking South Side residents to volunteer at a gleaming monument to a president who left office a decade ago is not civic engagement. It is a billionaire-class institution borrowing the language of service to fill a line item it chose not to fund.

The center opens in June. The Ambassadors will smile, point visitors toward the exhibits, and embody the community spirit the foundation loves to invoke. Valerie Jarrett will oversee it all from a position that pays $740,000 a year.

Everyone can do something to be a force for good. Some just get paid a lot more for it.