Did SPLC Receive Federal Funds?

By | 2026

WASHINGTON, D.C. May 1 (C-Fam) The Southern Poverty Law Center is under federal indictment for money laundering, and one of the questions that has arisen is how much money the left-wing group has received from the federal government.

The SPLC explicitly says that it does not receive any government funding but has relied on its existing endowment and donor contributions. However, reports have shown that before its dismantling, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) awarded over $27 million in grants to the Tides network, which partners with SPLC on an initiative called “Vote Your Voice” aimed at the southern U.S. states.

Tides has insisted that its USAID grants were solely used for international work and characterizes its relationship with SPLC as a partnership rather than a grant. However, given the fungibility of money, the rise of “dark money” networks in general, and the fact that Tides has received over $40 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations between 2020 and 2023, it has drawn criticism from conservatives.

SPLC describes the “Vote Your Voice” initiative, a ten-year, $100 million program, as a way to support “nonpartisan nonprofit organizations working to advance full voter participation and fair representation in the Deep South.” Given that the SPLC also describes itself as a “nonpartisan nonprofit organization,” it is unsurprising that the specific goals of the initiative include opposing Republican-backed efforts like voter ID requirements while supporting Democratic-led campaigns to enfranchise felons.

Apart from the link to the now-defunct USAID, the SPLC has taken an interest in international advocacy, in the form of attempting to direct pressure from UN human rights experts and committees against the U.S. government.

The SPLC does not have consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, but can still participate as an outside observer in various UN human rights processes, including the work of treaty monitoring bodies when they periodically monitor the U.S.

In 2024, the SPLC sent a submission to the UN Independent Expert on Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity criticizing restrictions on “gender-affirming” medical procedures, parental notification requirements when a child at school identifies “as a gender other than that assigned at birth,” and “campaigns to dismantle…the rights of pregnant people.”

In 2022, the SPLC submitted a report to the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, which monitors the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination, which the U.S. ratified.  The SPLC asked the committee to recommend that the U.S. “adopt federal legislation and/or a constitutional amendment protecting the right to safe and legal abortion and related care in every US state and territory,” arguing that abortion restrictions disproportionately affect racial minorities.

Abortion and gender ideology are not in the texts of any multilateral treaty, including those ratified by the U.S, and the opinions of UN human rights experts and expert groups do not create binding human rights obligations.  It was by pointing out this fact that C-Fam, the publisher of the Friday Fax, first made its way onto the SPLC’s list of “hate groups”—alongside many other mainstream conservative organizations.

Whatever the outcome of the current federal indictments, public opinion increasingly holds that the SPLC has abandoned any claim to be a fair arbiter of hatred or extremism, much less human rights.

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