Reports have circulated in the media that Silicon Valley Bank has donated more than $70 million to Black Lives Matter, but the inaccurate claim is based on misleading data. Media outlets, including The Federalist and commentators on Fox News, have suggested that the demise of Silicon Valley was related to the bank’s donations to Black Lives Matter and related causes. “Fox & Friends” co-host Ainsley Earhart said “Silicon Valley Bank has donated more than $73 million to Black Lives Matter,” and Fox News host Jesse Waters said the bank “pledged $75 million to Black Lives Matter. ” (Fox Corp., parent of Fox News, shares common ownership with News Corp., parent of MarketWatch publisher Dow Jones.) But a review of the source for that claim by the newsletter Popular Information found that Silicon Valley Bank made no donation or pledge. Funds to any groups associated with Black Lives Matter, including the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, Movement for Black Lives, and other groups. Black Lives Matter is a decentralized social-justice movement, not an individual group. Reports about the Silicon Valley bank’s Black Lives Matter donation stem from the Claremont Institute’s Center for the American Way of Life, which describes its mission as “arming the right with moral convictions, ideas and new policies, while working to undermine the left’s hold.” America’s Organizations and Conscience, a right-wing think tank, recently launched a database, which it revealed in a Newsweek article, meant to track pledges and donations to the “Black Lives Matter movement and related causes” that companies have made since 2020. , when the killing of George Floyd sparked nationwide protests and reckoning over long-standing racial inequalities. The Claremont Institute’s database lists corporate pledges and donations to the primary groups behind the Black Lives Matter movement “and related causes”. (The Claremont Institute Black Lives Matter also lists a group called the Black Lives Matter Foundation as an organization affiliated with the Black Lives Matter movement, but that foundation is neither affiliated nor affiliated with the movement.) Ray Silicon Valley Bank made zero donations to the groups. Associated with the movement, it is listed in the database because of its commitment to “affiliated causes,” which Claremont defines as “organizations and initiatives that advance one or more aspects of BLM’s agenda.” They include civil-rights groups such as Color of Change, the NAACP and the American Civil Liberties Union, a spokeswoman for the Claremont Institute said in an email, as well as the “Racial Reform Initiative [including] race-based, discriminatory hiring programs; caste-based, sub-prime lending; partisan voter initiatives; and DEI efforts. Most of Silicon Valley Bank’s $70,650,000 figure falls into the related cause category, the spokeswoman noted. “In SVB’s case, most of the funding we’ve released has gone to these other reform initiatives, not nonprofits (although SVB has donated to the NAACP, the ACLU, and the National Urban League, among others),” he said. (The Claremont Institute changed the total from $73 million to $70 million after Popular Information pointed out some errors in the data.) But, as Popular Information pointed out, most of Silicon Valley Bank’s pledges and donations went to “organizations and initiatives that have little to do with the BLM.” .” For example, the bank pledged $50 million over five years toward an internal program to “connect women, blacks and Latinos in the venture capitalist ecosystem with startup funding, networking and leadership development,” Popular Information reported. The organization says the BLM-related donation was $20 million to ‘support additional COVID-19 relief’ and to ‘establish a full-ride, needs-based university scholarship program’ for students at Arizona State University, Florida A&M University, Tulane University and Xavier University,’” the newsletter reports. “‘Associating a multi-billion dollar bank failure with donations to Black organizations is the definition of white supremacy – especially when it’s a bank that is run and operated largely by white people.'” – Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation spokesperson The question of which companies have donated to the Lives Matter movement and other progressive causes is of interest to people across the political spectrum. Conservatives who disagree with corporate spending on progressive causes have tried to track companies’ charitable donations, sometimes by filing shareholder proposals demanding that companies disclose their donations. Meanwhile, liberal groups want to hold companies accountable for their promises to address racial injustice and other social problems. Related: ‘Woke’ is used to describe everything and anything. What does that actually mean? But getting accurate information on how much money companies have sent to racial-justice movements is a challenge. Companies are not required to disclose donations to nonprofit groups unless they donate through a company foundation, which many do not. Estimates vary widely on the amount companies have pledged to racial-justice efforts since 2020. Candid, an organization that creates data tools to track nonprofits and foundations, maintains a database of donations toward racial equity by both companies and philanthropic foundations. Silicon Valley Bank is not listed among the funders. read more: Facebook, Amazon, Google and others pledged billions to racial justice in 2020. It is ‘almost impossible’ to track where all the money has gone. In response to questions about Silicon Valley Bank’s donations to the Black Lives Matter movement, a spokesman for the Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation said, “Associating a multi-billion-dollar bank failure with donations to Black organizations is a very literal definition. White supremacy – especially when it’s a bank that is run and run mostly by white people.” The spokesperson added, “We’re more than happy to talk about why the government takes swift action when banks are struggling. But swift action for poor and working-class black families often fails,” the spokeswoman added. . The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which took over the Silicon Valley bank, declined to comment.
