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Fundraising for the Obama Foundation began to ramp up in 2016, with donations totaling more than $13 million, the most since it was founded in 2014, according to tax records released by the foundation on Monday.

But that total is expected to surge as former President Barack Obama, now free of his own self-imposed restriction over making direct appeals for donations while in office, begins to raise money to pay for his ambitious presidential center. It is expected to cost at least $500 million by the time it is completed in 2021.

The majority of last year's donations were collected from a fairly small group of the former president's most loyal and prominent supporters nine donations in all that were worth $1 million or more. The fundraising total exceeded the combined $7.5 million that the Obama Foundation collected in 2014 and 2015.

Among the biggest donors was the Lucas Family Foundation of the filmmaker George Lucas, which kicked in $1 million toward the presidential center. His wife, Mellody Hobson, a Chicago native and president of Ariel Investments, sits on the private foundation's board.

The family foundation of Glenn Hutchins, a co-founder of the private equity firm Silver Lake Partners, donated $1 million, as did the family foundation of the investor Andrew Hauptman, owner of the Chicago Fire.

Andrew Hauptman's name emerged in emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee, with one email referring to his intent to "meet with the folks from the Obama Foundation."

He is chairman of Andell Inc., a Los Angeles-based private investment firm and family office he controls with his wife, Ellen Bronfman Hauptman. She is from the Bronfman family, whose fortune was built through the Seagram Co.

Daniel Levin and his wife, Fay Hartog-Levin, donated $1 million as well. He is the founder of the Habitat Co., a major Chicago developer where Valerie Jarrett once was chief executive. Fay Hartog-Levin is a fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs and a lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School who was appointed by Obama to serve as ambassador to the Kingdom of the Netherlands between 2009 and 2011.

Another Obama-era political appointee, Louis Susman, gave as well.

Susman is a retired Chicago investment and top fundraiser for Obama's presidential bid who was nominated as ambassador to Britain in 2009. He and his wife, Marjorie Susman, donated $1 million toward the presidential center last year.

So did John Doerr, a prominent venture capitalist from California with an estimated net worth, according to Forbes, of $4.9 billion. When he and his wife, Anne, donated $1 million to the Obama Foundation last year it marked their second contribution in as many years.

The foundation has not released an updated estimated cost for the Obama Presidential Center since the first design plans were publicly released this month. It calls for three buildings in a campuslike setting in historic Jackson Park on the South Side.

But, in a significant shift, it will not house any permanent collection of presidential documents and artifacts maintained by the National Archives and Records Administration. Instead those records will be stored in existing NARA facilities and made available in digital format or on loan.

That decision freed the Obama Foundation from many stringent requirements concerning the center's design and endowment, including having to raise an endowment equivalent to 60 percent of the cost of the library portion of the center.

It also means that Obama Presidential Center will not receive the federal funds given to other presidential centers to support the library on their grounds. For example, NARA provided the library for George W. Bush $6.2 million in fiscal 2015.

Even with this loss, though, the savings in not having to meet NARA requirements could more than make up for the loss of federal funds.

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Obama Foundation ramped up fundraising in 2016 - Chicago Tribune