The Sneaky Way Corporate America Blacklists Conservatives, and How More of Them Are Fighting Back

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—More nonprofits are urging the software company Benevity—which hundreds of companies use to allow employees to donate their time and money to charities—to stop systematically blacklisting conservative nonprofits.

Twelve organizations first sent a letter to Benevity in October following the assassination of Turning Point USA founder Charlie Kirk. The new letter, sent Monday and exclusively provided first to the Daily Signal, will feature three new signatories: Turning Point USA, PragerU, and Focus on the Family.

“Charitable giving programs should empower generosity, not enforce political conformity,” Douglas Napier, executive chairman and CEO of 1792 Exchange, which helped organize the letter, told the Daily Signal in a statement Friday.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​ “Benevity must immediately end its use of Southern Poverty Law Center’s defamatory ‘Hate List’ and ‘Hate Map’ to block mainstream charitable organizations like Turning Point USA and Focus on the Family.”

“1792 Exchange’s research found that hundreds of major corporations rely on Benevity’s platform, making this a critical moment for corporate leadership to reject ideological gatekeeping,” Napier added. “Benevity must completely remove any use of the SPLC filter, adopt a viewpoint-neutral process, and restore full access to the organizations it has unjustly excluded.”

“For far too long, major corporations have been relying on the Southern Poverty Law Center’s nefarious ‘Hate List’ to decide what organizations and charities their employees may give to as part of their corporate giving programs,” Paul Batura, vice president of communications at Focus on the Family, told the Daily Signal. “These entities have been relying on a distorted definition of ‘goodness.’”

“In fact, citing and sourcing the SPLC is the equivalent of a company promising clean water drawing their water from a polluted or toxic aquifer,” Batura added. “It’s our privilege to join the 1792 Exchange’s growing coalition in urging companies to stop making decisions and recommendations based on information from the SPLC.”

Benevity Keeps Using SPLC

The issue gained renewed salience after a federal grand jury handed down 11 criminal charges against the SPLC for allegedly funding the very hate groups it tells donors it exists to “dismantle.”

The Daily Signal reached out to Benevity last month to see if the company would disavow the SPLC in light of the indictment.

“Benevity is not directly affiliated with the SPLC,” the company’s spokesperson told the Daily Signal. “Benevity clients have the option to use the list of nonprofit organizations included on the SPLC’s annual Hate Map to determine nonprofit eligibility within their programs. The use of this option is not a default setting and is at the sole discretion of clients.”

According to its website, Benevity connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them. It says it has managed $16 billion in grants and 99 million employee volunteer hours. In 2023, more than 2.3 million people donated through the Benevity platform, representing $3.2 billion.

“Benevity’s denial that it defaults to the SPLC filter is hard to square with its own history,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told the Daily Signal in response to the Benevity statement.

Benevity’s former CEO, Kelly Schmitt, delivered a PowerPoint presentation in 2021 explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.”

Scott added, however, that “the real issue isn’t how the SPLC filter is used, it’s why this list is used at all.”

Critics have said the SPLC trades on its history of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to smear conservatives. The center publishes a “hate map” that plots parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, conservative groups like Turning Point USA, and Christian groups like Focus on the Family alongside chapters of the Klan.

In 2012, a convicted terrorist told the FBI he targeted a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, for a mass shooting. Four months after the SPLC added Turning Point USA to the “hate map” last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly murdered Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk, aiming to silence his “hate.”

According to 1792 Exchange, 252 companies using the Benevity platform exclude conservative groups by using the SPLC list as a screening tool.

The Letter

“We, the undersigned organizations, urge Benevity to immediately end the use of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s ‘Hate Map’ and ‘Hate List’ in determining which nonprofits are eligible for corporate charitable giving and employee matching programs,” reads the letter, now signed by 15 groups.

“By relying on these partisan designations, Benevity legitimizes a severely biased blacklist that inspires violence, urges discrimination against mainstream organizations, and undermines the spirit of charitable giving,” the letter adds.

The list of signatories includes Alliance Defending Freedom, the American Family Association, the Center for Christian Virtue, the David Horowitz Freedom Center, Do No Harm, the Family Policy Alliance, the Family Research Council, Focus on the Family, GenSpect, Moms for Liberty, Partners for Ethical Care, PragerU, Turning Point USA, 1792 Exchange, and Them Before Us.