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The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has been funded by big name businesses and philanthropists including George Soros, JPMorgan, ex-Apple CEO Tim Cook and George Clooney.
The group — indicted Tuesday for allegedly funneling millions to the hate groups it says it is ideologically against — also holds over $786 million in assets, yet still solicits donations.
In fact, it took in $106 million in donated cash 2024, according to its latest available financial disclosures, yet still ran “urgent” appeals for “emergency” cash.
Over the years, donations have been made by big name donors, many of whom pledged to the organization after clashes at a 2017 by “Unite the Right” white supremacist rally in Virginia, which resulted in the death of one protester.
That year, George Clooney’s foundation donated $1 million, and longtime donor JPMorgan gave an additional $500,000 for “disaster relief,” records show.
Then-Apple CEO Tim Cook pledged $1 million, CBS reported, and MGM said it would match employee donations to the SPLC and other social justice groups, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal.
Little did those donors know that the SPLC was allegedly sending money to one of the people involved in organizing the “Unite the Right” rally, according to the indictment from the Department of Justice, revealed Tuesday.
According to the indictment the informant, known only as “F-37,” was paid $270,000 between 2015 and 2023 by the group.
Other donors include George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which pledged $75,000 in 2016 to “convene an ‘Anti-Hate Table’ of national anti-bias and Muslim, Arab, and South Asian community organizations,” per its website.
Chick-Fil-A, OpenAI, and the studio behind the “Halo” video games also made small scale donations, public records show.
In total, SPLC allegedly “secretly funneled more than $3 million” to leaders of various hate groups including the Ku Klux Klan, United Klans of America, Aryan Nations, the Nationalist Socialist Party of American Nazis and the Sadistic Souls Motorcycle Club between 2014 and 2023, according to the indictment.
The SPLC, which has denied the claims and says it will fight them in court, has said it has used sources within hate groups since the 1980s, ostensibly to gather intelligence and help bring them down from the inside.
But prosecutors claim funding has gone beyond intelligence gathering and “informants” used SPLC funds to pay for hate content and extremist events.
Informing neither law enforcement nor donors of these activities was tantamount to “materially false and fraudulent pretenses, representations, promises, and omissions,” according to the indictment.
Liora Rez, founder of StopAntisemitism, fears the SPLC could have an ulterior motive — boosting their coffers.
“It’s unimaginable to us that a civil rights group would gin up fake bigotry in order to solicit donations from concerned Americans,” Rez told the Post.
“If this is what the SPLC did, it is shameful and outrageous.”
SPLC holds an “F” rating from Charity Watch for hoarding its hundreds of millions in assets in investment accounts. The watchdog group automatically gives its lowest grade to any organization with assets exceeding five years of operating costs.
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