Hundreds of companies use the software company Benevity to connect with nonprofits, allowing employees to donate their time and money, but Benevity’s platform blacklists conservative nonprofits, using as a resource the very same leftist group that now faces charges for hiding its secret payments to Ku Klux Klan members. The SPLC admitted to funding members of the Klan and other white nationalist groups, claiming that the funding was part of a program supporting “informants” who reported on “violent extremists” and “saved lives.” A Justice Department indictment, however, accuses the SPLC of directing “racist postings,” featuring as “extremists” on its website the same people it was paying, and even supporting an organizer of the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. The Daily Signal reached out to Benevity to see if the company would reconsider using the SPLC as a filter in light of the allegations. “Benevity is not directly affiliated with the SPLC,” the company’s spokesperson told The Daily Signal in a statement Friday. “Benevity clients have the option to use the list of nonprofit organizations included on the SPLC’s annual Hate Map to determine nonprofit eligibility within their programs. The use of this option is not a default setting and is at the sole discretion of clients.” According to its website, Benevity connects “nearly 1,000 enterprise companies” to a network of 513,000 nonprofits after vetting 2.2 million of them. It says it has managed $16 billion in grants and 99 million employee volunteer hours. In 2023, more than 2.3 million people donated through the Benevity platform, representing $3.2 billion. “Benevity’s denial that it defaults to the SPLC filter is hard to square with its own history,” Greg Scott, executive vice president at 1792 Exchange, told The Daily Signal in response to the Benevity statement. “Former CEO Kelly Schmitt bragged about its use of the ‘hate list’ as recently as 2021.” Schmitt delivered a PowerPoint presentation explicitly stating that the company had “vetted” almost “2 million nonprofits,” adding that it used the “Southern Poverty Law Center Hate List.” Scott added, however, that “the real issue isn’t how the SPLC filter is used, it’s why this list is used at all.” Critics have said the SPLC trades on its history of suing Ku Klux Klan groups into bankruptcy to smear conservatives. The center publishes a “hate map” that plots parental rights groups like Moms for Liberty, conservative groups like Turning Point USA, and Christian groups like Focus on the Family alongside chapters of the Klan. In 2012, a convicted terrorist told the FBI he targeted a conservative Christian nonprofit in Washington, D.C., the Family Research Council, for a mass shooting. Four months after the SPLC added Turning Point USA to the “hate map” last year, Tyler Robinson allegedly murdered Turning Point Founder Charlie Kirk, aiming to silence his “hate.” According to 1792 Exchange, 252 companies using the Benevity platform exclude conservative groups by using the SPLC list as a screening tool. The list includes Adobe, Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, McDonald’s, Netflix, PayPal, Salesforce, Starbucks, and many more. Scott argued that Benevity should reconsider after the DOJ indictment. “Given recent revelations about the SPLC itself funding hate groups, [Benevity] CEO Soraya Alexander should demonstrate clear leadership by removing the SPLC filter from Benevity’s platform entirely,” he said.