Karma: SPLC Tried To Cut Off “Hate List” Groups From Fidelity Charitable, Now It’s Cut Off

Karma: SPLC Tried To Cut Off “Hate List” Groups From Fidelity Charitable, Now It’s Cut Off

For decades The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) terrorized the right-of-center political spectrum with fear of being put on SPLC’s “Hate Watch” lists. As I’ve discussed in many recent interviews, the lists were political clubs used against people like Dr. Ben Carson, Prof. Carol Swain, Rand Paul, the Family Research Council, and countless others who did not deserve to be on a list next to Neo-Nazis.

We have been on SPLC’s case for over 15 years,

SPLC’s hate lists were inflated both by counting “chapters” as individual groups (thereby inflating the numbers) as well as including groups that may have been nothing more than websites with no on-the-ground presence. Such was the case with supposed Klan and neo-Nazi groups on the hate map in Rhode Island.

But the lists were worse than that. SPLC struck deals for the SPLC list to be used by the FBI and major corporations, and also as a pressure tactic. SPLC pressured Fidelity Charitable, one of the largest Donor Advised Funds (DAF) not to permit pass through donations to groups on the hate list. A DAF functions as a pass through way to donate – you donate to the DAF and the DAF gives you a tax deduction receipt, and you later can “recommend” that the funds you donated be sent to certain groups. It’s a very common way for both large and small donors to donate in years when they need the tax deduction, but spread the payments to groups over longer periods of time. It’s a massive industry and perfectly lawful.

DAF’s have hundreds of billions of dollars under management, and as of 2024 passed through over $65 billion to charities.

Having tried to pressure Fidelity to cut off others, SPLC now finds itself cut off by Fidelity and Vanguard Charitable from pass through donations. The NY Times first reported the story:

Two of the country’s largest sponsors of donor-advised funds have cut off the Southern Poverty Law Center.

Last week, the Justice Department indicted the civil rights nonprofit on charges of committing financial crimes. Many of the center’s supporters immediately went online to donate money to help it fight the federal government.

But Fidelity Charitable told its customers, who have over 350,000 charitable giving accounts that allow them to maximize tax savings while giving money to eligible nonprofits, that they could not donate to the center through the accounts anymore.

“Fidelity Charitable is aware of an ongoing governmental investigation into Southern Poverty Law Center,” according to an email it sent to a donor. “Consistent with our grant-making standards and practices, the organization is not an eligible grant recipient during the ongoing investigation.” Fidelity Charitable shares a parent company with Fidelity Investments.

Vanguard Charitable sent a similar message when denying a grant request: “The organization has had allegations and/or charges brought against them for activities that may call into question their ability to carry out their tax-exempt charitable purpose.”

The Times noted SPLC’s prior attempts to pressure Fidelity, Vanguard and other DAFs:

In 2023, the S.P.L.C. criticized Fidelity Charitable and other sponsors of donor-advised funds, including Vanguard, for acting as a “consistent and significant source of income for groups peddling a variety of hateful and extremist beliefs.” It specifically mentioned white nationalist, hard right and anti-LGBTQ+ groups.

Tyler O’Neil at The Daily Signal, who has written extensively about SPLC, noted that Southern Poverty Law Center Gets Taste of Its Own Debanking Medicine:

After years of the Southern Poverty Law Center demanding that charitable foundations blacklist conservative and Christian nonprofits, the shoe is finally on the other foot: Fidelity Charitable has denied contributions to the SPLC.

Fidelity hasn’t targeted the SPLC for ideological reasons in the same way the SPLC targets conservatives, however—America’s largest sponsor of donor-advised funds is merely following its own policies regarding nonprofits under criminal investigation….

Conservatives may be forgiven for indulging in a little bit of schadenfreude at this news.

As I documented in my book “Making Hate Pay: The Corruption of the Southern Poverty Law Center,” the SPLC weaponized its history of suing KKK groups into bankruptcy to smear conservatives. It places mainstream conservative and Christian nonprofits on a “hate map” with Klan chapters, claiming the map reveals the “infrastructure upholding white supremacy.” This “hate map” inspired a terrorist attack in 2012.

The SPLC doesn’t just release this list every year to its donors and the media, exaggerating “hate” in order to drum up relevance and scare donors into ponying up cash. It also encourages social media platforms and companies like Fidelity to blacklist the groups on the map.

The SPLC has partnered with the Council on American-Islamic Relations to publish “Hate-Free Philanthropyopens in a new tab” reports that call on companies in the charitable sector to blacklist “anti-Muslim hate groups.” The Amalgamated Foundation, a project of the SEIU-owned Amalgamated Bank, launched the “Hate Is Not Charitableopens in a new tab” campaign, urging donor-advised funds to blacklist the groups on the SPLC “hate map.” Amalgamated Bank has, thankfully, sunsetted the campaign and removed it from the website.

In 2023, the SPLC released a report on “extremist finance,” pressuring donor-advised funds operated by major banks to blacklist “hate groups” like Alliance Defending Freedom and “antigovernment extremist groups” like Moms for Liberty.

In 2017, Vanco Payments abruptly ceased providing payment processing services to the Ruth Institute. Vanco Payments noted that the Ruth Institute “has been flagged by Card Brands as being affiliated with a product/service that promotes hate, violence, harassment and/or abuse.” It did not specifically cite the SPLC, but the “hate” accusation likely traces back to the SPLC’s brandingopens in a new tab the institute an “anti-LGBTQ hate group.”

In 2022, PayPal froze the Moms for Libertyopens in a new tab account, providing no explanation. Only after Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican, pressured the company did it restore the account and allow Moms for Liberty to access the $4,500 in that account.

Some companies, such as Eventbrite, make no secret of the fact that they use the SPLC “hate map” to blacklist organizations, refusing to do business with them.

In the wake of the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, the Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network sent an email to leadership at major banks, urging them to stop “bankrolling bigotry,” specifically citing the SPLC on “hate groups.”

This loss of DAF funding could be significant, though SPLC has several hundred million dollars in assets and over $100 million in annual donations as of 2024.

The DAFs cutting off the SPLC is a HUGE blow.

Fidelity is their biggest source of publicly disclosed revenue, usually giving them $3-4M per year, and their second and third largest donors are also DAFs. https://t.co/Afjedjk5IE

— Parker Thayer (@ParkerThayer) April 29, 2026

For a smaller non-profits, like the ones SPLC tried to cut off from DAF’s, such news would be devastating. For SPLC it’s a rounding error for now, but if it escalates into states suspending SPLC’s right to solicit, that would be financially more serious.

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