Multiple major charities throughout the country are using blacklists compiled by far-left groups to prevent conservative, Christian, and other right-wing organizations from receiving donations, according to a new report.
As reported by the Daily Caller, various public records and other documents show that some charities rely on donor-advised funds (DAFs), and thus turn to left-wing groups such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) for lists of groups that should not receive donations. The SPLC has a reputation for simply labeling every remotely conservative, right-wing, or Christian group as a “hate group” and recommending them for blacklisting.
“‘Hate group’ is a serious charge, one very few donors would be keen to have their names associated with,” said Robert Stilson, research specialist at the Capital Research Center. Even though most conservatives know not to take the SPLC’s lists seriously, “the bigger risk is that charitable intermediaries and facilitators such as DAFs will continue to substitute the SPLC’s biased views for those of the donors themselves.
The report by the Caller determined that at least 11 community foundations utilize the SPLC and other left-wing groups for such blacklists. These 11 groups combined reported over $12 billion in assets as of 2022.
In many cases, despite an individual donor often stating where they want their donations to go, the charity itself has the final say over where the money goes, and has the authority to deny a donation towards a particular recipient. Grant policies and public statements from various charities have reaffirmed this authority, and some have even admitted to relying on the SPLC.
In one such example, the Pittsburgh Foundation refused to send a donor’s $5,000 grant to Turning Point USA, a conservative student organization, because the left-wing group Horizon Forum had falsely labeled it as a “hate group.”
Other charities that rely on the SPLC’s blacklists include the Boston Foundation, the Cleveland Foundation, and the Saint Paul & Minnesota Foundation. Regional community foundations that defer to the SPLC include those in the Greater Washington, Napa Valley, Stonewall, Delaware, Fox Valley Region, and Western Massachusetts.
“The SPLC’s ‘hate map’ may discourage would-be donors from contributing to mainstream conservative and Christian causes, as it suggests these causes are hateful along similar lines to the Ku Klux Klan,” said Tyler O’Neil, Managing Editor of the Daily Signal.
As a result of such systematic blacklist efforts, conservatives have been forced to create alternative charities that do not discriminate among recipients, such as the Christian crowdfunding alternative GiveSendGo.