One of the most common hesitations heard from employees who are approached to sign up for a match giving program is a lack of confidence: confidence in where your donors’ dollars are really going. One of the biggest responsibilities of a CSR or Social Impact manager is to build trust before anything else. With trust will come a willingness to participate. Employees want to feel good about where their donation dollars are going. And with over 1.7million nonprofits in the United States, donors also want to trust that their dollars are going to some amazing organizations that are creating impact for good.
What is a Hate Group?
There are over 700 hate groups in the United States today. Hate groups are defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center as having beliefs or practices that attack or malign an entire class of people, typically for their immutable characteristics. The FBI defines a hate crime as a violent or property crime that is “motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” Hate groups are classified as groups that act out a hate crime.
Dozens of these controversial nonprofits that are classified as hate groups by the SPLC hold a 501(c)(3) nonprofit status. And since there is such a large number of nonprofit organizations, vetting for hate groups in-house would be very difficult.
What is the Southern Poverty Law Center?
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization that monitors hate groups and extremists throughout the United States and exposes their activity. The SPLC team is made up of civil rights lawyers, industry experts and analysts who are committed to ensuring justice and equality for all.
Tracking Hate Groups
The SPLC’s mission is to monitor hate groups and expose them. The SPLC hate map consists of any organization that has conducted a hate crime the previous calendar year and will stay on the map for the current calendar year.
The SPLC allows the option to search for hate groups by location, by ideology, or to download their hate map data. You can view the SPLC hate map here:
Vetting for Hate Groups when Choosing Nonprofits to Support
Vetting nonprofits can be a time and labor sensitive task with some very heavy weight on the outcome that only a large team of experts could execute successfully. That is why vetting is typically left up to the experts at SPLC. All vetting for the Millie database is even through the SPLC!
While vetting nonprofits will always be a concern, you can rest assured knowing that the guesswork can be taken out of the equation when you have trusted resources to help in place.
