The winding down of CGI after this week’s glitzy gathering and the resulting layoffs stem from concessions made by the Clinton Foundation to controversies swirling around Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

But the recent moves to sunset the project have prompted controversies of their own around the Clinton Foundation, which administers CGI. And they presage the difficulties the Clintons can be expected to face if Hillary Clinton wins the presidency and they move forward with plans to scale back the rest of the foundation.

Some foundation allies grumbled that the announcement of CGI’s elimination — and of many of its positions — was handled in an insensitive manner, according to the former officials. Others predicted that retaining some staff to work with deep-pocketed government, corporate and nonprofit donors on existing programs would only feed criticism about whether some of the businessmen, companies or foreign governments that donated to the global charity got preferential treatment from Hillary Clinton’s State Department.