Amazon is going all-out to defeat the Heritage Foundation proposal. Amazon’s board of directors, a Who’s Who of prominent liberals, has circled the wagons and urges shareholders to vote against the resolution. When asked for this article about its contributions to the SPLC and how the company came to rely on it, Amazon’s spokeswoman refused to answer basic questions. Instead, she referred me to the company’s publicly available statement opposing the shareholder resolution. When I told her I’d already read it and repeated my questions, she said, “We don’t have anything to add beyond what’s in our proxy statement.”

Last month, a federal grand jury indicted the SPLC on conspiracy and fraud charges for paying members of white supremacist groups, supposedly as informants. Although the SPLC hasn’t been found guilty of anything and will have its day in court, the mere allegations have made it radioactive for risk-averse corporations. This is especially true of those with something to hide about their dealings with the SPLC.

This is not a good look for Bezos, whose flagship media property, the Washington Post, is emblazoned with the slogan that “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” Apparently, Amazon doesn’t think stonewalling reporters and shielding corporate decision-making from transparency qualifies as harming democracy! We’ll soon see whether the company’s shareholders agree.

The SPLC’s role in vetting corporate contributions extends far beyond Amazon. Some 250 corporations use the SPLC, mainly through third-party donor advisers, like Benevity, which incorporates its “hate group” designations.  

In addition to vetting who gets corporate donations, the SPLC is itself a major beneficiary of corporate giving. The Daily Signal has identified 15 Fortune 1000 companies that were contributors, including Raymond James, which gave the group a whopping $689,079 before the indictment.  

This highlights a larger problem with corporate philanthropy. We have come a long way from the days when corporate donors such as John D. Rockefeller Sr. dispersed dimes directly from his pockets to children. Rockefeller and his wife, Laura, used their Standard Oil Company fortune to create leading institutions, such as the University of Chicago. Instead of outsourcing the task to third parties like Benevity, they were directly involved in their philanthropic undertakings.

One hundred years after Rockefeller’s era, corporate philanthropy has grown to a $45 billion-a-year industry. The sector has spawned an ecosystem of donor advisers, grant writers, and public relations specialists who counsel wealthy individuals and corporate executives on how to get the most bang for their charitable bucks. One of the driving forces behind corporate charity’s growth is the concept of “stakeholder capitalism.” Until the 1970s, most corporations viewed their primary purpose as returning value to shareholders, sometimes called “shareholder capitalism.”

In the early 1990s, the idea took hold that corporations needed to be responsible to a wide range of “stakeholders,” ranging from the workforce and communities where they operate to consumers and eventually the environment itself. The chief proponent of corporate stakeholder responsibility was the Sawyer-Miller Group, a New York-based Democratic consulting firm headed by David Sawyer and Scott Miller.

In 1991, Sawyer and Miller decided to jettison their campaign consulting business and focus strictly on corporate and government clients. I became a managing director of the firm at the time. We proselytized the virtues of engaging stakeholders to corporate titans, and the money followed. 

Spending on corporate philanthropy escalated from $5.9 billion in 1990 (adjusted for inflation to $15.12 billion now) to nearly $45 billion today — a 300% increase! The focus on stakeholder capitalism invited corporate engagement in a vast array of political and social issues. Perhaps the most extreme manifestation of this phenomenon is the Gates Foundation with its $86 billion war chest deployed for everything from fundamentally changing America’s educational system with its failed Common Core approach to fighting woke battles for the Left. 

It is easy to see how this approach to philanthropy opened the door for organizations such as the SPLC to wield their influence to defund conservative charities. Advocates of the non-profit sector, such as the National Council of Nonprofits and The Nonprofit Alliance, have rallied to the SPLC’s side, accusing the Justice Department of criminalizing “operational decisions” about how nonprofit groups are run.

DEMOCRATS EYE MIDTERM ELECTIONS OPENING IN TRUMP BALLROOM SECURITY FUNDING FIGHT

With $45 billion at stake, it’s easy to see why they will fight for the status quo. If the SPLC loses in court, the entire sector will face greater scrutiny and calls for reform. 

The best reform of all would be for corporate leaders to return to shareholder capitalism, increase dividends and wages, and let individuals decide for themselves which charities to support.      

John B. Roberts II served in the Reagan White House and was an international political strategist. He was executive producer of The McLaughlin Group and is an author and artist.