Haley to use book profits to start charity

Gov. Nikki Haley said Tuesday that she will use profits from a book that she is writing and privately raised cash that was left over from her inauguration to start a foundation to help needy S.C. communities.

Haley’s book, “Can’t Is Not An Option: My American Story,” is due out in April. Haley has pledged her $550,000 signing bonus as well as future profits from the book to the foundation. She also will donate $200,000 left over from her January inauguration.

That seed money will set up the Original Six Foundation. The nonprofit will use a Web site, theoriginalsixfoundation.org, to pair poor communities and families in need with S.C. churches, nonprofits, businesses and individuals willing to donate time, money, items and services.

The help will take many forms and will be specific to what each community needs, said Haley, who has discussed the creation of a nonprofit for months as a way to get impoverished counties back on track without using additional taxpayer dollars.

“Government can’t always fix things,” Haley said Tuesday at Jubilee Academy, an independent Christian school in Columbia that relies on private donations to educate underprivileged students. “Sometimes, they make things worse.”

Private-sector donations will mean new after-school programs, school supplies, medical screenings, dental care and more in the state’s poorest counties, the first-term Republican governor said.

Haley said the foundation, which will be run by a yet-to-be-announced board, will go into every S.C. county and meet with local leaders to determine community needs. Then, the foundation will work to find people and businesses in the private sector to help.

The most needy counties will get help first. The foundation will go into the first, yet-to-be-determined county in January and provide help in February. Eventually, every county will get help. “We’re going to lift that county up, and we’ll continue to monitor them,” she said.

The foundation’s name comes from Haley’s time growing up in Bamberg.

“As the only Indian family, we were the original six,” she said of her parents, siblings and herself.

Each Monday, Haley said her parents went to the grocery store in the small, rural town to buy groceries for needy people — an exercise that Haley said taught her and her siblings an important lesson about giving back.