Staff Reports
According to a Daily Caller News Foundation study, charitable foundations in the US are turning to employing politically driven and biased lists from left-wing organizations to manage the distribution of donations. Lists that designate mainstream conservative and faith-based organizations as "hate" groups are compiled by the Horizon Forum and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), thereby barring them from obtaining funds. If this behavior continues unchecked, conservative groups may lose access to resources for which they would otherwise qualify.
With billions of dollars in assets under their control, a number of community foundations base their contribution rules on the materials generated by the SPLC and Horizon Forum. Donor-advised funds are managed by these foundations, allowing people to give money or stocks to the organization for future payout. Nonetheless, a donor's recommendation may be rejected by the foundation in charge of the fund's administration.
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For instance, the Pittsburgh Foundation turned down a donor's request to send a gift to Turning Point USA (TPUSA) because the organization was labeled as a "hate" group by Horizon Forum. The SPLC materials are also used by a number of other community foundations in their grant review processes. These community foundations are located in the Napa Valley, Delaware, Western Massachusetts, Fox Valley Region, Greater Washington, and Stonewall.
Opponents contend that the SPLC's list unjustly classifies legitimately extreme organizations like the Ku Klux Klan alongside mainstream conservative and religious groups as hate groups. There are questions over the validity of the SPLC's designations when groups like the Family Research Council (FRC) and the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) were added to the hate list. In fact, the gunman who attempted to attack the FRC's office was inspired by the SPLC's "hate map."
Horizon Forum is less public in its operations than the SPLC, which is more open about its classifications of hate groups. The group does not make available to the public its list of hate groups or the process it used to categorize them. In addition to sponsoring Horizon Forum, The Proteus Fund encourages diversity in philanthropy and supports other community foundations. It is important to note, meanwhile, that several of the staff members of Horizon Forum have previously worked for the contentious Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which is well-known for its antisemitic rhetoric.
This study shows a concerning trend in which philanthropic foundations use biased lists to decide how much money to give to conservative and religious organizations. This essentially limits the amount of assistance these organizations can receive. These actions compromise the aims of funders and uphold the SPLC's unbridled authority to silence conservative views. Ensuring equitable and unbiased resource allocation is crucial in democratic systems, since it grants financing chances to all organizations, irrespective of their political affiliation.
