Amazon’s Charity Program, Amazon Smile, Uses Southern Poverty Law Center to Blacklist Christian Organizations from Fundraising
Amazon Smile sounds like such a cheerful program!
Customers can sign up to the program to have 0.5% of their purchase donated to a charity. Charities go through an application process to be accepted.
But many Christian charities have nothing to smile about after learning that they need not apply.
Amazon uses hate group Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) to ‘vet’ whether an organization is allowed to participate in the charity program.
According to the Amazon Smile website:
Eligible Charitable Organizations
Organizations must be public charitable organizations that are registered and in good standing with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) to be eligible to participate. Eligible charitable organizations must also be located in one of the 50 U.S. states, the District of Columbia, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, Guam, or the U.S. Virgin Islands. Organizations that engage in, support, encourage, or promote intolerance, hate, terrorism, violence, money laundering, or other illegal activities are not eligible to participate. Amazon relies on the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control and the Southern Poverty Law Center to determine which organizations fall into these groups. Charitable organizations must also adhere to the AmazonSmile Participation Agreement to maintain eligibility. Charitable organizations may choose not to participate in AmazonSmile at any time. Although we aim to include only charitable organizations that are in good standing and do not engage in any of the activities described above, we cannot guarantee the good standing and/or conduct of any charitable organization.
In 2019, Senator Tom Cotton called for the IRS to investigate tax exempt status of the SPLC hate group.
Cotton says SPLC is a political hate group, “They have a hate may and they use it to stigmatize their political opponents, respectable center-right organizations like the Family Research Council and Alliance Defending Freedom. There are plenty of groups on the left that I don’t agree with but I don’t try to stigmatize them as a hate group and then go peddle that to CNN, The New York Times or attack their donors.”
SPLC claims they are the “Premier U.S. organization monitoring the activities of domestic hate groups and other extremists – including the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, the neo-Nazi movement, antigovernment militias and others.”
Included on SPLC’s “hate” list are religious freedom organizations like Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the Ruth Institute (RI) and the Family Research Center (FRC).
https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2022/12/amazons-charity-program-amazon-smile-uses-southern-poverty-law-center-blacklist-christian-organizations-fundraising/