EXCLUSIVE — The embattled national Black Lives Matter group used its charitable resources to solicit funds for its affiliated political action committee Tuesday, a move one expert called a “clear violation” of IRS charity rules.
The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation, the charity that represents the national BLM movement, voluntarily shut down its ability to raise money Feb. 2 following a Washington Examiner investigation into its lack of financial transparency that prompted multiple states to issue demands to the group to cease its fundraising activities.
Since then, BLM had refrained from using its email list to solicit contributions — until Tuesday, when it sent a message to its supporters that was signed “Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation” and contained what appeared at first glance to be a donation button to support the charity.
When clicked, however, the donation button sends supporters to a fundraising page for Black Lives Matter PAC, BLM’s affiliated political group that has worked to elect Democrats across the country since its launch in October 2020.
“BLM PAC is preparing for the most critical midterm election yet. Every single race is an opportunity to build Black political power,” the fundraising page linked in BLM’s charitable email states. “If you’re ready to continue the electoral fight for Black lives, chip in to our efforts and start building for the 2022 midterms.”
Paul Kamenar, an attorney for conservative watchdog group the National Legal and Policy Center, told the Washington Examiner that BLM’s use of charitable resources to solicit funds for overtly political activities “appears to be a clear violation of the IRS rules prohibiting charities from soliciting contributions to a political action committee.”
The managing partner and CEO of Fireside Campaigns, a liberal communications consulting firm that sent the email on BLM’s behalf, said the BLM PAC donation button was inadvertently included in the message.
“During a recent email send, Fireside Campaigns inadvertently included a fundraising link to a non-fundraising email. We take full responsibility for this error,” Brad Bauman told the Washington Examiner.
A workshop on the IRS’s website states unequivocally that a charity risks jeopardizing its 501(c)(3) status when it “solicits contributions to or for candidates or political organizations.”
New York Attorney General Letitia James issued similar guidance ahead of the 2020 presidential election, saying in a press release that charities are prohibited from “soliciting contributions for, on behalf of, or against any candidate for public office or to a political party.”
Bolder Advocacy, a group that helps charities lobby within the bounds of the law, also states in a guide posted to its website that charities “may not solicit financial or other forms of support for candidates or political organizations” and that when charities do so, they are “likely to violate the campaign intervention prohibition.”
BLM co-founder Patrisse Cullors claimed in a February 202`1 report that the $746,000 BLM PAC spent on the Georgia Senate races in 2020 played a pivotal role in securing victory for Democratic Sens. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff.
“We won’t stop until we get Black Lives Matter into the mouth of every elected official,” Cullors said in the report. “To be clear, we understand that transforming the world requires both protest and politics. We must vote and organize. The BLM PAC is an additive to an already immeasurably strong movement.”
Also in 2020, BLM PAC paid an art company run by the father of Cullors’s only child nearly $150,000 to co-produce live election night coverage that industry experts told the Daily Caller should have cost only a fraction to produce.
Cullors resigned from BLM in May 2021 amid criticism of her personal real estate purchases. She appointed two replacement executives to take her place in the charity, but both replacements quietly announced in September that they never took the job because of disagreements with BLM.
Kamenar said he was shocked that BLM would risk running afoul of IRS rules, especially considering the charity just weathered a storm of compliance problems from at least 10 states in February due to its failure to report what it did with funds, at least $90 million, it claimed to have raised in 2020.
Washington state ordered BLM to “immediately cease” soliciting contributions in the state in early January due to its reporting failures, and the California Department of Justice followed up in February with a threat to hold BLM’s leaders personally liable if they failed to fork over information about its 2020 financial windfall.
BLM was also booted off Amazon’s charity platform, AmazonSmile, in February because it fell out of compliance in states across the country.
BLM got back into good standing with California in mid-February after the charity revealed it had changed its 12-month accounting cycle to July through June, a move that enabled it to delay reporting its 2020 finances until mid-May. BLM also brought on the services of Democratic lawyer Marc Elias and elevated longtime Hillary Clinton ally Minyon Moore to its board of directors.
BLM remains out of compliance in Washington, New Jersey, North Carolina, Maryland, and Virginia as of Thursday afternoon.
*story by The Washington Examiner
