The federal indictment against the Southern Poverty Law Center, which accuses the SPLC of wire fraud and bank fraud for funding members of the very white supremacist groups it claims to dismantle, has led some financial institutions to block grants to the group.
After Fidelity Investments and Vanguard Financial announced they would stop issuing grants to the SPLC due to the indictment, The Daily Signal reached out to 15 companies on the Fortune 1000 whose (in some cases independent) foundations sent the SPLC more than $10,000 since 2020.
Two of these companies have followed Fidelity’s lead in stating that the SPLC will not be eligible to receive grants through donor-advised funds due to the federal indictment.
“Corporate donations to the Southern Poverty Law Center underscore the need for companies to ensure they are not inadvertently supporting extremism,” Dustin DeVito, director of research at 1792 Exchange, told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday.
“Companies that outsource charitable giving programs to providers like Benevity should also verify that those platforms are not relying on defamatory SPLC smears to exclude eligible charities,” he added.
