The Eric Trump Foundation, the Trump family’s cancer charity, sent more than $16 million to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital over its first decade and helped fund a $20 million surgery and intensive care unit. But a 2017 Forbes investigation and a later New York Attorney General inquiry found that a substantial share of donor money did not go where the public was told: hundreds of thousands of dollars were billed back to Trump-owned golf courses and other Trump properties as event expenses, and the AG’s office ultimately identified at least $500,000 in charity funds that flowed into Trump family businesses between 2011 and 2016.
What the Charity Raised and What It Promised Donors
Eric Trump founded the charity in 2007, at age 23, to support pediatric cancer research at St. Jude in Memphis. Its main fundraiser was an annual golf invitational at Trump National Golf Club in Westchester County, New York, drawing about 200 golfers and 400 dinner guests. St. Jude has confirmed receiving more than $16 million from the foundation over its first ten years.
Eric Trump told the public, repeatedly, that the family’s golf courses were provided “100% free of charge.” That framing was the basis for claims that nearly every dollar donated reached the hospital. It was also the claim the later reporting undercut.
What Forbes Found in the Billing Records
In June 2017, Forbes reported that the Trump Organization had been billing the Eric Trump Foundation for event costs at its golf clubs despite the public assurances. From 2007 through 2010, tournament expenses averaged around $50,000 a year. Then they climbed sharply: $142,000 in 2011, $230,000 in 2013, $242,000 in 2014, and $322,000 by 2015.
Ian Gillule, a former marketing director at the Westchester club, told Forbes that Donald Trump personally instructed staff to start charging the charity. “I don’t care if it’s my son or not — everybody gets billed,” Gillule recalled Trump saying. Charity experts quoted in the reporting said the expense figures could not be reasonably justified for a one-day golf tournament.
Forbes also documented more than $1.2 million in payments from the charity to the Trump Organization with no recipients specified beyond the organization itself. Another $500,000-plus was redirected to outside charitable groups, and at least four of those groups later held their own golf events at Trump courses.
The $100,000 That Cycled Back
When the billing began in 2011, the Donald J. Trump Foundation, a separate private foundation controlled by Donald Trump, sent $100,000 to the Eric Trump Foundation. Forbes characterized the transfer as effectively cycling donor money back into Trump businesses: money moved from one Trump-controlled charity to another, then out to a Trump-owned golf course as an event bill.
Board Changes and Who Was Running It
The foundation’s board was restructured in 2010, with a majority of members replaced by Trump Organization employees or associates. Observers cited by Forbes described the charity as operating like a subsidiary of the family business rather than an independent nonprofit. That governance picture is part of why the billing pattern went unchecked internally.
What the New York Attorney General Found
After the Forbes report, the New York Attorney General’s office opened a review of the Eric Trump Foundation, separate from its existing investigation into the Donald J. Trump Foundation. The AG’s inquiry concluded that between 2011 and 2016 the foundation moved at least $500,000 in charity funds into Trump family properties, including the Westchester golf club, Trump SoHo, and Mar-a-Lago. Investigators also cited what they called a “proliferation of misleading marketing materials” about the foundation’s expense ratios, referring to the “100% free” framing that had underpinned donor appeals.
What Happened to the Charity Afterward
In December 2016, Eric Trump announced he would stop fundraising for the foundation to avoid the appearance of conflicts of interest while his father was president. In early 2017, the foundation removed all Trump Organization employees from its board and rebranded as Curetivity. Eric Trump resigned from the board, though he later reappeared in the organization’s marketing materials as its founder.
Curetivity continues to operate and raise money for St. Jude. According to its website, it has raised more than $50 million to date for the hospital and has committed $20 million toward a research floor at St. Jude’s Inspiration 4 Advanced Research Center.
How This Differs From the Trump Foundation Case
Two Trump charities drew scrutiny in the same period, and they are frequently conflated. The Eric Trump Foundation is the cancer charity; the Donald J. Trump Foundation is a separate private foundation that Donald Trump had used for decades and that was the subject of a 2018 New York Attorney General lawsuit. That case ended on November 7, 2019, when Justice Saliann Scarpulla found that Trump had breached his fiduciary duty and ordered him to pay $2 million in damages. The foundation was dissolved under judicial supervision, and its remaining assets were distributed to eight unrelated charities.
The $2 million ruling, the dissolution, and the 19 admissions Trump signed as part of that settlement all concern the Donald J. Trump Foundation, not the Eric Trump Foundation. The cancer charity was reviewed by the AG’s office and reorganized itself as Curetivity, but it was not dissolved by court order and was not the entity behind the $2 million penalty.
The Short Answer on the Money
Most of the money the Eric Trump Foundation raised did go to St. Jude, which is why the hospital confirmed the $16 million figure and why Curetivity has been able to continue that funding relationship. What the reporting and the AG’s inquiry established is that a meaningful portion of the money donors thought was going to children’s cancer research was instead absorbed by the Trump Organization through event billing at Trump golf courses and other properties, and that public claims of a “100% free of charge” venue were inaccurate for most of the years the golf tournament ran. The AG’s office put the figure that flowed to Trump family properties at a minimum of $500,000 across the 2011 to 2016 period; Forbes, working from tax filings, documented larger sums when payments with no listed recipient and grants to other charities holding events at Trump courses were included.
The charity itself survives under a new name and a reconstituted board, and its fundraising for St. Jude is ongoing. The billing practices that drew scrutiny were tied to the years the foundation’s board was populated by Trump Organization employees, and they stopped when that governance changed.