The Sneaky Way Corporate America Blacklists Conservatives, and How Some Are Fighting Back

FIRST ON THE DAILY SIGNAL—Hundreds of companies use the software company Benevity to connect with nonprofits, allowing employees to donate their time and money, but Benevity systematically blacklists conservative nonprofits, and those nonprofits are now speaking out.

“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, signed by 12 conservative groups and exclusively provided first to The Daily Signal.

“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.

Benevity

Benevity provides a platform for corporations to manage philanthropic efforts, such as providing a way for employees to donate to nonprofits before taxes, matching employee contributions, facilitating employee volunteering, and making corporate grants to nonprofits.

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.

1792 Exchange, a nonprofit that exposes bias in corporate businesses, has counted 224 of the Fortune 1,000 companies that use Benevity. The list includes Accenture, Adobe, Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Amazon, American Express, Apple, AT&T, Best Buy, Cigna, Coca Cola, Costco, John Deere, Lowe’s, Macy’s, McDonalds, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia, Paramount, Salesforce, Spotify, UPS, and many more.

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

The conservative nonprofits’ letter notes that “there are also recent reports of employees from major corporations that Benevity’s system blocked them from donating to Turning Point USA because of the SPLC’s designation. At the same time, left-leaning political groups like the Southern Poverty Law Center and Planned Parenthood remain fully eligible for Benevity’s platform.”

The SPLC

The SPLC gained its reputation by suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy, but it now puts mainstream conservative and Christian groups on a “hate map” with Klan groups, suggesting they represent a similar threat to Americans.

The SPLC “hate map” includes Alliance Defending Freedom, a premier conservative Christian law firm that has won multiple cases at the U.S. Supreme Court; Do No Harm, a group of doctors committed to ridding medicine of divisive racial ideologies and opposed to “gender-affirming care;” the David Horowitz Freedom Center, which monitors the threat of radical Islamist extremism; and Moms for Liberty, a group of parents demanding a say in their kids’ education.

These and other groups signed the letter to Benevity.

“The SPLC’s claim to be a civil rights organization cannot be taken seriously,” the signatories wrote. “Instead, it is a political weapon that targets mainstream libertarian, conservative, religious, and family advocacy organizations for ideological reasons.”

The signatories claim the SPLC attacks organizations “not because of violence or extremism, but because they dissent from the SPLC’s preferred progressive orthodoxy.”

Inspiring Violence

The letter notes that the “hate list” Benevity uses to screen nonprofits has inspired violence.

“In 2012, a gunman entered the Family Research Council’s Washington, D.C., headquarters intending to commit mass murder,” the letter states. “He later admitted that he chose his target after seeing it labeled on the SPLC’s website. By using the SPLC’s lists to vet charities, Benevity reinforces and perpetuates a dangerous mechanism that has already been used to justify violence against peaceful Americans.”

The Family Research Council also signed the letter.

The letter also notes that the SPLC added Turning Point USA to its “hate map” earlier this year, shortly before the assassination of Turning Point USA’s founder, Charlie Kirk. “While federal authorities have not yet confirmed whether the assassin accessed the SPLC’s website, the timing and context raise deeply troubling questions.”

“SPLC leadership itself has admitted that its ultimate goal is not to educate the public but to ‘destroy’ its ideological opponents,” the letter adds.

After the Kirk assassination, FBI Director Kash Patel told The Daily Signal that all of the bureau’s “ties with the SPLC have been officially terminated.” He called the group a “partisan smear machine” and said its “disgraceful record” makes the group “unfit for any FBI partnership.”

The conservative groups ask Benevity to “publicly end its use of the SPLC’s hate list and hate map, adopt a viewpoint-neutral process for nonprofit eligibility, and restore access to organizations unfairly excluded.” They note that Benevity’s new CEO, Soraya Alexander, will start on Nov. 1, and add that this transition “presents a valuable opportunity” for the new CEO to champion fairness and objectivity.

The conservative groups also urge corporations using Benevity’s platform to join them in asking the platform to disavow the SPLC, and to “discontinue their partnership with Benevity until these changes are made.”

“Charitable giving should empower generosity, not enforce ideology,” the letter concludes.

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, GenSpect, Moms for Liberty, Partners for Ethical Care, 1792 Exchange, and Them Before Us.

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