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Where does the SPLC's $300,000,000 annual budget come from?

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The SPCC has a truly HUGE endowment fund, but that does not prevent them from continuing to raise large sums of money from contributions. About 15 years ago, I believe, Dan Morse, an outstanding reporter for the Montgomery Advertiser did s fabulous piece of investigative journalism, profiling the SPLC, and targeting on their finances. In an extensive series of articles, Morse disclosed just how incredibly successful the SPLC has been in raising money and raised the obvious question of why they continued to do so, even though their endowment would more than pay for their activities for many years to come.

Morse also reported how the SPLC used black students as interns and treated them in a demeaning manner. The series was a finalist in the Pulitzer Prize competition for the year it was published. It finished in second place. Morse went on to write for the Baltimore Sun and the Wall Street Journal.

Dees and his lawyers protested and demanded retractions, apologies, etc., and threatened to sue. Morse's editors and publishers backed him up and refused any concessions. The SPLC did not sue, most likely because the lawsuit would validate what Morse had written, leading to further embarrasment.

Some of the things the SPLC has done are commendable, but it appears to me that their primary interest is sustaining their operation and keeping the money rolling in.

Below are excerpts
from a speech by Dan Stein, President, Federation for American Immigration Reform summarizing the matter more thoroughly than I have. The full speech is found at: http://www.splcinfo.com/

"I realize I am not the first person to question the tactics and operating strategy of the Southern Poverty Law Center, founded right here in Montgomery. I know I will not be the last. There have been a considerable number of exposes about the SPLC's fundraising and management practices, including an important investigation conducted by the Montgomery Advertiser in the mid-1990's. From February 12 through 14, 1994, the Montgomery Advertiser published the results of an extensive investigation by Dan Morse. He concluded that the Southern Poverty Law Center practiced "financial mismanagement, poor management practices and misleading fundraising practices." The newspaper found that the organization accumulated far too much money, spent too little on actual program work and was a narrowly-controlled fiefdom that failed to subject itself to any outside scrutiny. It was, in a word, controlled by one or two people who paid themselves handsome salaries while doing little to fight poverty in the south.

Morse has since appeared on panels complaining that in the course of doing the investigation, the SPLC was defensive and secretive, threatening him and the paper with one libel suit after another. The SPLC later responded defensively to the expose, claiming they were being smeared - if you can believe that.

Not only were the findings of the Montgomery Advertiser confirmed by subsequent articles as well as various charity watchdog services, all of whom consistently gave the SPLC low ratings in its fiduciary performance, there were subsequent complaints filed about a "plantation mentality" in its hiring and promotion procedures involving its African American employees. This plantation mentality is consistent with the manner in which the SPLC has recently treated African American immigration reformers; the SPLC has put them down with a condescension that his impossible to ignore."

** ** ** ** ** **


In 2000. Ken Silverstein, Washington Editor of Harper's, wrote a scathing article entitled "The Church of Morris Dees." Here is part of that article, which further exposes the $tench at the SPLC.

"Back in 2000, I wrote a story in Harper's about the Southern Poverty Law Center of Montgomery, Alabama, whose stated mission is to combat disgusting yet mostly impotent groups like the Nazis and the KKK. What it does best, though, is to raise obscene amounts of money by hyping fears about the power of those groups; hence the SPLC has become the nation's richest "civil rights" organization. The Center earns more from its vast investment portfolio than it spends on its core mission, which has led Millard Farmer, a death-penalty lawyer in Georgia, to once describe Morris Dees, the SPLC's head, as "the Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker of the civil rights movement" (adding, "I don't mean to malign Jim and Tammy Faye").

When in 1978 the Center's treasury held less than $10 million, Dees said the group would stop fund-raising and live off interest when it hit $55 million. As he zeroed in on that target a decade later, Dees upped the ante to $100 million, which the group's newsletter promised would allow it "to cease the costly and often unreliable task of fund raising." At the time of my story seven years ago, the SPLC's treasury bulged with $120 million, and the organization was spending twice as much on fund-raising as it did on legal services for victims of civil-rights abuses-yet its money-gathering machinery was still running without cease.

It's still going. Last week, a reader sent me the SPLC's 2005 financial filing with the IRS, which is required by law for charities. In five years, the SPLC's treasury had grown by a further $48 million, bringing its total assets to $168 million. That's more than the annual GDP of the Marshall Islands, and has the SPLC rapidly closing in on Tonga's GDP.

Revenues listed for the 2005 filing came to about $44 million, which dwarfed total spending ($29 million). Of that latter amount, nearly $5 million was spent to raise even more money, and over $8 million was spent on salaries, benefits, and other compensation. The next time you get a fund-raising pitch from the SPLC, give generously-but give to a group that will make better use of your money. Like Global Witness. -- http://www.harpers.org/archive...-week-in-1172847076, March 2007.

THESE PEOPLE DO NOT NEED YOUR MONEY!!!

Disclosure: Dan Morse dated one of my daughters and my wife and I thought very highly of him, but daughter left him behind along with a string of other broken hearts. Ultimately she found another good man, though.

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