New data show Corporate America has donated $82 billion so far to Black Lives Matter and similar causes.
QUICK FACTS:
- According to the Claremont Institute’s “BLM Funding Database,” Corporate America has donated nearly $82.9 billion to Black Lives Matter and related movements so far.
- This number reportedly includes more than $123 million to the BLM parent organizations directly.
- “Blackrock instituted a $10M action plan, including $5M to organizations supporting racial equity, $5M fund to elevate Black and Latinx social entrepreneurs, a doubling of its employee charitable gift matching program from $5K to $10K per donation,” the database says. “It also established an $800M Impact Opportunities Fund to back businesses or projects serving BIPOC communities. About $80M of the fund deployed as of May, 2022.”
- Silicon Valley Bank, the recent company making headlines after its collapse this month, gave more than $73 million to BLM and related groups.
CLAREMONT INSTITUTE’S FINDINGS ON CORPORATE AMERICA DONATING TO BLM:
“These figures, while shocking, likely underrepresent the true magnitude of the shakedown as some companies failed to make known their contributions, and many BLM organizations remain unknown,” the institute STATED.
BACKGROUND:
- In September 2022, a lawsuit claimed Black Lives Matter leader Shalomyah Bowers “siphoned” more than $10 million in fees from donors and rerouted the funds to his consulting firm.
- The lawsuit also accused Bowers of directing funds to a new group called Black Lives Matter Grassroots, Inc.
- “Mr. Bowers decided he could not let go of his personal piggy bank,” BLM Grassroots charged in the lawsuit. “Instead, he continued to betray the public trust by self-dealing and breaching his fiduciary duties. Instead of using the donations for its intended purposes, Mr. Bowers diverted these donations to his own coffers and intentionally took calculated steps to prevent those same resources from being used by BLM for on-the-ground-movement work.”
- BLM Global Network Foundation paid the Bowers Consulting Firm $2,167,894 in 2021, according to federal tax filings.
- In February 2022, a BLM organizer in Memphis was sentenced to prison after she was convicted for illegally registering to vote.
- Pamela Moses, described by some outlets as the founder of a BLM chapter in Memphis, was sentenced to six years in prison at the time after she was convicted in November 2021 for illegally registering to vote in Tennessee.
- “You tricked the probation department into giving you documents saying you were off probation,” Judge Mark Ward told Moses at the time. “After you were convicted of a felony in 2015, you voted six times as a convicted felon.”
