Joe Biden Selects Delaware for His Presidential Library

Former President Joe Biden has chosen to build his presidential library in Delaware. He's enlisted the help of several former aides, friends, and political supporters to begin fundraising for the library and identifying a site for his museum and archives.

During the week of Sept. 1, the Joe and Jill Biden Foundation approved a 13-person board that will direct the project. Members of the board include former U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Biden's longtime adviser Steve Ricchetti, Democratic fundraiser Rufus Gifford, and others who share personal and professional connections with Biden and his wife.

Biden's presidential library team will face several challenges as they raise money for the 46th president's library. This effort comes amid a time when the former president's political party is divided over the way forward, and many significant Democratic donors have ceased fundraising support.

“There's certainly folks — folks who may have been not thinking about those kinds of issues who are starting to think about them,” said Gifford, chairman of the library board, to 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.”

According to The AP's report, presidential library costs have skyrocketed over the last several decades. George W. Bush's library secured its $500 million fundraising goal before the library's dedication. The Obama Foundation had an impressive $1.6 billion fundraising goal for Obama's Presidential Center, which is slated to open in 2026 in Chicago.

While Biden's library team has begun preliminary stages of planning, Gifford predicted to The AP that the cost of the project would likely “end up somewhere in the middle” of the Obama Presidential Center and the George H.W. Bush Presidential Library and Museum. The latter came in around $43 million when it opened in 1997.