Amalgamated Bank’s ‘hate’ crusade hypocrisy exposed

Amalgamated Bank is one of the smaller and lesser-known U.S. financial institutions, controlling less than $10 billion in assets. Yet it has scored numerous high-powered clients, such as Harris for President and the Democratic National Committee, plus a host of Democratic legislators and candidates.

That’s no coincidence: Amalgamated is a partisan, agenda-driven institution. But given that it is both attempting to gaslight America on hate and trying to interfere with contributions to causes with which it disagrees, Amalgamated’s deep associations and influence within the Democratic Party are not only problematic but dangerous.

Democratic donors may be unknowingly supporting hate in America, and it’s up to the campaigns to put an end to it.

Amalgamated presents itself as not merely above reproach but morally advanced. It provided seed funding for the Amalgamated Charitable Foundation, claiming its mission is to “redefine philanthropy,” while, unlike many foundations, it has commingled its leadership, with Priscilla Sims Brown, president and CEO of Amalgamated Bank, also serving as the chairman of the ACF’s board.

It also claims to be in a position to lecture others. Besides operating a donor-advised fund of its own, the ACF also sponsors a campaign called “Hate Is Not Charitable,” directed at other DAF providers. Though it presents itself as reasonable, appropriate, and humanitarian, this campaign is an effort to suppress support for those who oppose Amalgamated’s partisan and even bigoted views.

Donor-advised funds are a common vehicle for donors, desirable for convenience and anonymity. Donors give to a DAF, receive an immediate receipt for their gift, and, over time, instruct the fund to disburse parts of the deposited money to causes of the donor’s choice. Besides permitting donors to schedule tax deductions to maximal advantage, having a DAF write the check means the donor’s contribution to an organization never shows up on the donor’s 1040 or the recipient charity’s Form 990. DAFs routinely reveal the donor’s identity only to the beneficiary; this information is not made public, and thus donors cannot be identified or targeted for the charities that they support.

Where is the IRS?

This is where Hate Is Not Charitable comes into play. Although it claims to be “deeply concerned” that charitable funds can be used to fund “organizations that foment hatred,” Amalgamated’s Hate Is Not Charitable campaign targets other DAFs rather than the organization certifying American charities: the U.S. Internal Revenue Service.

“Donor Advised Fund providers,” Amalgamated intones, “should filter out hate,” but not by using the neutral standards of the IRS, which, of course, DAFs are already required to do. Amalgamated arrogates to itself and its partners the ability to decide whom others should consider hate groups. It knows that if deprived of the anonymity of a DAF, donors could be easily targeted and shamed by Amalgamated’s “empowered” activists for supporting unfavored causes.

Amalgamated claims that Hate Is Not Charitable was prompted, in part, by “white nationalist violence in Charlottesville,” where marching neo-Nazis chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Yet a site search of Amalgamated returns no mention of anti-Semitism in its literature, and it isn’t mentioned as an issue the bank cares about. Instead, the campaign concerns itself with allegedly “anti-LGBTQ groups, anti-Muslim groups, anti-immigrant groups, [and] a white nationalist group.”

Amalgamated’s main resource is the Southern Poverty Law Center. The SPLC’s “Hate Map” is hardly neutral; it was used in a hate-fueled terror attack on the offices of the Family Research Council in 2012. According to the Coalition for Jewish Values, the organization I serve as managing director, the Hate Map is inherently “detrimental and even dangerous to the Jewish community.” The SPLC fails to identify radical Islamic groups as hateful, while besmirching those who confront the dangers posed by those groups as “anti-Muslim.”

The SPLC worked together with the Council on American-Islamic Relations on a 40-page guide to “Hate-Free Philanthropy,” which recommends, among other things, Amalgamated’s Hate Is Not Charitable campaign. CAIR was originally identified as a partner in the Biden administration’s national strategy to counter anti-Semitism, only to be unceremoniously dumped after it blamed Israel for the Hamas atrocities of October 2023, a pogrom that CAIR’s director celebrated with glee.

Amalgamated not only touts CAIR as a charter signatory of its campaign but also gave the organization at least $175,000. And this is far from Amalgamated’s only association with groups inciting anti-Semitism and endorsing terrorism.

Ties to October 7

Earlier this month, U.S. and Canadian authorities identified Samidoun, an organization that helped organize anti-Semitic protests on American college campuses and the Freedom Plaza protests that called for “Death to Israel,” as a “sham charity” that existed to support the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a participant in the October 7 attacks. Samidoun is not independent. It is a project fiscally sponsored by the Alliance for Global Justice, a charity that also sponsors campaigns to boycott Israel and other left-wing causes.

According to its own public filings, Amalgamated Charitable Foundation gave over $1 million to AFGJ between 2020 and 2022, the most recent year for which records are available. The Capital Research Center also identifies Amalgamated’s donor-advised fund as a key money conduit for AFGJ. This is especially troubling because, since 2020, credit card companies have blocked donations to Samidoun, and in 2023, several credit providers, including Stripe, PayPal, and Salsa Labs, stopped serving AFGJ directly.

House Ways and Means Chairman Jason Smith (R-Mo.) in September called for the IRS to strip AFGJ of its tax-exempt status due to its role as the sponsor of Samidoun’s efforts “to incite violence and instill chaos.” If Amalgamated truly wanted to fight hate, it would have already cut ties with AFGJ, Samidoun, CAIR, and other organizations that celebrate or sponsor terrorism.

Instead, Amalgamated targets neutral groups to advance its partisan agenda — an agenda partially funded through its financial relationships with major Democratic campaigns and the Democratic National Committee. It’s regrettable that Democratic donors may be unknowingly supporting hate in America, and it’s up to the campaigns to put an end to it.